Legally Insane
by X-parrot
Summary: According to popular belief, going more than three days without sleep means you're legally insane. Mokuba's kidnapped, Kaiba's losing it, and Yugi and his deck are just trying to help...
1. the thing about sleep deprivation

Originally started for the crack challenge on the lj comm 'locketpair', and then it got all out of hand.

Legally Insane

In some places, going more than seventy-two hours without sleep was enough to get one declared legally insane. Kaiba Seto was presently in a position to appreciate the logic of this stance.

Forty-eight hours was nothing. Headaches were a near-constant condition for him anyway, and the tremors improved after the first thirty-six, as long as one carefully monitored one's caffeine intake. And the minor visual hallucinations were easily compensated for in most situations, though it was best to avoid jet piloting and the like.

But after the third day the hallucinations move into the major arcana, and become noisier and harder to ignore. Much harder. Bouncing spots at the edge of his vision were one thing, but when they came into the foreground, still hopping up and down and squeaking as well--

God, he hated Kuriboh.

"Kaiba-kun," and Yugi had noticed him glaring ferociously at empty space. Again. "Maybe you should get some sleep..."

Five times in the last hour was a new record. Kaiba had given up answering. He knew damn well he should sleep. He wasn't an idiot. Loss of efficiency due to sleep deprivation eventually outweighed the disadvantages of wasting hours with one's eyes closed.

The thing about sleep deprivation was that the worst of the symptoms weren't caused by the lack of physical rest, but the lack of dreams. The brain needed regular bouts of REM to function. Dream-deprived, the subconscious compensated by spurting fantasy into the real world. And when one did finally go to sleep, the system caught up by bypassing the normal sleep stages and dropping one immediately into the dream state.

Kaiba was used to nightmares. Like the headaches, they were an endurable symptom of existing. But not now. Better the impossible creatures living before his eyes than the death he would see if he closed them. A thousand possibilities and they were all the same in the end. Cold skin, bloody or bruised or blue with drowning; gray eyes, staring open glassily or forever closed. And silence, like the cold, motionless and ceaseless, ever unbroken by any voice, any breath, any heartbeat.

Just nightmares. Untrue. Unacceptable and unendurable. But every passing second increased the chances that those refused dreams would become reality.

Mokuba had been missing for three days, and every beat of Kaiba Seto's heart marked another instant closer to the fourth day, another instant farther from hope.

Three days since his brother had walked out Kaiba Corporation's doors to catch some sun on his lunch break, and dropped off the face of the earth. His bodyguard had been found in the hedges around the parking garage, taser-stunned. He remembered nothing. No witnesses, that the police had located.

Three days and there had been no contacts. No notes, no ransom demands, no threatening calls. No leads, nothing to explain how or why his brother had been taken.

Kaiba knew he needed sleep. His reflexes were quarter-speed or worse, his coordination was shot to hell, and his patience--well, his patience had never been that impressive anyway, but usually before he yelled at his assistants for responding to his question too slowly, he would at least remember to ask the question first. His employees, paid to deal with him, had all fled by now, leaving only one individual behind.

Yugi was still here. Yugi had been here in Kaiba's office for the last three days. He had turned up mere hours after the missing person report had made it onto the news, had asked Kaiba what he could do to help. Kaiba had told him unequivocally that there was nothing. Yugi had nodded, and said he understood, and then had not left. Except when Kaiba did, sitting next to him in the limo as they canvassed Domino, searching.

Maybe it wasn't sleep deprivation after all. Spending seventy-two hours in the company of Mutou Yugi was quite enough to get one declared legally insane.

Yugi didn't have the right contacts or disposition for the calls and emails Kaiba had to make. But he was quick enough to grasp data sorting, when Kaiba finally gave in and decided if he were going to be there regardless he might as well make himself useful. He had spent the last couple days patiently going through records of past and present KaibaCorp employees and associates, flagging those with anything suspicious.

Otherwise Yugi was in constant touch with his friends on his celphone. They were combing the city on foot, Kaiba had picked up. Searching, though he had made no requests of them.

Kaiba hated the itchy, uncomfortable feeling of gratitude.

He hated even more that none of them had had any more success than him.

Besides helping with the search, Yugi had ordered takeout meals, had stuck chopsticks into Kaiba's hands and even dared to close his laptop, though he hadn't gone so far as to place a bowl of noodles on top of it to keep it shut, as Mokuba did at times. Eating was inefficient but starving was even more so, so Kaiba had forced down what was offered. He had made a point not to thank Yugi for it, but that rudeness had entirely passed Yugi by, or at least was not enough to stop him from bringing more food at intervals, with the same quiet, teeth-grinding patience.

Yugi had mentioned that Kaiba should take a nap a few times, but he hadn't been really insistent about it until a couple hours ago, when he had awoken from a nap on the couch to Kaiba loudly pontificating that he didn't need to be told what to do by a bodybuilder with a sword and the most absurdly pointed ears since Mr. Spock's.

Fucking Celtic Guardian. He was even more of a busybody than his deck's master. Kaiba had pretended he had been talking on his headset instead. He didn't think Yugi had bought it, but his rival hadn't said anything. Except to start suggesting that perhaps Kaiba ought to get some rest every quarter hour or so.

Though Yugi was talking to himself now.

And answering himself, which was even more annoying.

"Could you two keep it down? I'm trying to work here," Kaiba growled.

"Um--Kaiba-kun?"

Kaiba looked up. And blinked hard to clear his vision, but he apparently wasn't seeing double, but an actual second Yugi standing next to the first. Taller, angled eyes, streaked hair; he knew the pharaoh well, but usually it was either him _or_ the smaller model. Not both together, in matching navy uniforms and golden pyramid puzzles, giving him identical odd looks.

"Fuck," Kaiba muttered, "don't tell me I have to beat both of you to get my title back."

Both Yugis blinked in simultaneous synchronization. "Kaiba?" the taller one demanded. "Can you _see_ me?"

It wasn't as ridiculous a question as it sounded; when Kaiba looked closer he realized there was a certain translucent inconsistency to the other Yugi's being. Dammit. He focused on the original, solid, real Yugi and tried to shut the hallucinatory one out of his vision. Which was difficult with the way he was waving his arm. "No, of course I can't see you, I'm not seeing things that aren't there."

"Umm," Yugi said. "Good, Kaiba-kun," but the particular way he said it sounded less actually convinced and more 'convince the crazy man I am convinced'. If it had been an edge of fear in his voice Kaiba wouldn't have minded, but it sounded more like Yugi was humoring him.

And Kuriboh was still hopping up and down in the corner of his eye. Kaiba glanced surreptitiously at the other Yugi's translucent sleeve. The real Yugi wasn't wearing a duel disk, and there wasn't one on the pharaoh's arm, either. None in this office, so that bouncing furball couldn't be a hologram.

If Kaiba didn't know better he would swear the monster's infernal jumping was intended to cheer him up. Or at least placate him, like the things that Yugi wasn't saying aloud but were still so audible in every word he spoke. _Don't give up, Kaiba-kun. We'll find him. Don't lose hope._

As if he ever would give up. Yugi should know him that well, at least.

The text on his laptop screen blurred when he tried to refocus on it. Kaiba rubbed his eyes, reached for his cup of coffee and found it drained. On a scrap of paper under the cup he had scribbled 10:35. He checked his watch. 11:04 PM. He should wait another hour at least. Though his head was pounding and his hands trembling already, so really, what difference did it make? He picked up the cup.

"No more coffee now! It's not good for you, Kaiba-kun."

The only reason he knew that wasn't Yugi's voice was because Yugi didn't sound like a girl. Otherwise that chiding tone could have been his exactly, even if the voice was the wrong gender. But Mazaki Anzu wasn't in the building, that he knew of.

Blue pastels danced before him, blocking his way to the door, and Kaiba grimaced as Black Magician Girl shook a chastising finger at him. "How about some food instead? You don't need any more caffeine in your system."

Kaiba's fuzzy vision begged to differ, but arguing with a product of his unquestionably demented subconscious wasn't worth the trouble. "Fine," he said, and put the cup back down.

"Kaiba-kun?" Yugi asked, from behind the non-existent vision of his card.

Kaiba looked from the magic girl to the other Yugi instead. "You should run another scan of the satellite--" He stopped. No, Yugi couldn't. He was sitting on the couch where Mokuba should be sitting, and using the laptop Mokuba should be using, but Yugi didn't know how to access the satellite network.

"Never mind," Kaiba said, "I'll do it." Not that it had done any good the last six dozen times; wherever Mokuba was being held, he must be far enough inside or underground that his tracker couldn't be located. But if or when he were moved, the signal might show up. Kaiba had attempted to refine the system to pick up a weaker signal, but the interference within the city was too great for accurate readings, and he had too many other possibilities to investigate to have time to work on that problem.

Mokuba would probably be able to come up with something, if he were here. Yes, this whole mess would be much easier if Mokuba were here to help. If Mokuba were here to find himself.

He definitely needed more coffee.

But Black Magician Girl was still blocking the way to the break room with the coffeemaker, when he looked. Kaiba shook his head. "I'll be back in a moment," he said, as if Yugi or the denizens of his deck might be going anywhere. He only wished.

The private bathroom adjacent to his office was equipped with a shower as well as the other necessities, designed for all-nighters. No coffee, but he dialed the water temperature down to just above freezing and stuck his head under the faucet. The icy stream wasn't enough to wash the gritty feeling from his eyes, but it blasted away the worst of the weariness.

Straightening up again, Kaiba peered around the washroom. He wouldn't suspect either Yugi of peeping, but Black Magician Girl was another story. Never trust another player's cards, especially one that dresses like that. He was alone, however, the room silent but for the rush of water.

He shoved dripping bangs out of his eyes and looked at himself in the mirror. Blue eyes and wet face and his reflection stood alone, too. Not even a flicker of imaginary motion at the edge of his vision, but that wouldn't last. When he raised his hand before him, it was shaking; even making a fist he couldn't stop those tremors. Withdrawal. Sleep was a worse addiction than alcohol or cocaine and he hadn't managed to break it, though not for lack of trying.

Legally insane. Of course Kaiba was aware that he fit the profile for several mental disorders even under optimal conditions. Losing his mind didn't especially concern him. He was no coward, to fear losing his life. And losing his soul, he'd done that several times already.

Losing his brother, however, was unforgivable.

_Are you a loser, boy?_

He was alone, but that hated voice sounded in his memory as clearly as if his late stepfather were standing before him. Kaiba met the cold eyes glaring at him from the mirror, told himself, "I'm no loser." His voice echoed off the tiles, reflected back to him, a reassuringly real resonance, louder than Gozaburo's ghost.

He wasn't so far gone that he couldn't see the irony of it, deliberately summoning that memory, taking strength from the man he despised more than anything. But he needed to be strong now, however he could manage it.

Three days going on four, and no ransom demands, no contacts, no clues at all. _Prepare for the worst,_ the police officers' faces had been saying all today, silently, just as Yugi's face told him not to give up hope.

It could be anyone. Business rival, ex-employee, random madman. They had run across more than their fair share of all already. No idea why he was taken, and without motive nothing could be deduced. "Do you have any enemies?" the police had asked the first day, and he had laughed aloud. But Mokuba had none, Mokuba only made friends. And it was Mokuba they wanted; if this had been a gambit aimed at him, they would have revealed it by now. If it was a corpse they planned to give him, by now they surely would have...

He needed strength, whatever its source. The despised memory of Gozaburo, or the grating charity of Yugi and his friends. Or madness, the coward's final refuge from reality, but if he needed that shield to keep standing--he could bear to be a coward, as long as he could keep walking, keep moving forward until he got to his brother, until he got his brother back.

_Though they seem sane they shall go mad_, or was it, _Though they go mad they shall be sane_? Either was accurate, and far too applicable besides. Kaiba never did like poetry. Most of it was pretty lies, which were worthless, and the rest was ugly truths, which were worse.

He toweled off his hair, smoothed it down. Changed into a dry shirt and checked himself in the mirror. Fatigue hung a gray curtain over his eyes, but through it he could see himself, standing firm, neatly attired, steady, composed. Strong. He didn't look like a madman in the mirror.

Mokuba was waiting for him. Counting on his big brother to come and save him, protect him as he had always sworn to do. Mokuba would only stop believing in him when he stopped breathing--but he wouldn't. He had to believe in Mokuba, believe he was alive, believe that he would survive until he found him.

If Kaiba closed his eyes, he saw a corpse. He kept them open. Refusing to look at that vision, even if he couldn't banish it. Even if he wasn't strong enough himself to keep the same faith in his brother that Mokuba had in him.

Only one Yugi was present when he returned to the office, sitting on the couch with his back to Kaiba, talking urgently on his celphone. No sign of the pharaoh, translucent or otherwise. Black Magician Girl, however, was still around, like her master also in intent conversation, whispering to a scaly green humanoid crocodile.

Kaiba glared at the newcomer. As if Kuriboh and the others weren't bad enough. Wyvern Warrior wasn't one of Yugi's cards. "So what has the _bonkotsu_ found?"

Yugi turned toward him, putting down the phone, expression surprised. "How'd you know I was talking to Jounouchi-kun, Kaiba-kun?"

Glaring at the figures didn't help. Black Magician Girl only waved at him in a kindly way and gave him a thumbs' up. Unlike Yugi's alter ego, they didn't even have the decency to be translucently insubstantial hallucinations. If anything they looked more convincingly real than his Solid Vision holograms.

"--bring him to the police? Did you hear me, Kaiba-kun?"

No, I was trying to figure out what the hell your cards were talking about. "I heard you."

"Ah...then should we go there? Or should they bring the guy here? Even if Jounouchi-kun and Honda-kun can't get him to talk, if he knows something--"

Kaiba jerked up, electrified, the exhaustion that had been blanketing his senses ripped away, bringing the office and Yugi's voice into sudden sharp focus. "What does who know?"

"They don't know, exactly," Yugi said, "but if Jounouchi-kun's right, they've found the man who kidnapped Mokuba-kun--"

"Where?" Kaiba snapped, reaching for his trenchcoat draped over a chair. He donned it in a swirl of white as he strode for the door, hit the communicator on the collar and ordered a car to be brought around to the garage to pick him up.

"Only a few blocks from here," Yugi said, scrambling to his feet to head after him, jogging to keep up with Kaiba's far longer strides. "Kaiba-kun, Mokuba-kun isn't with him, and the guy was refusing to tell them anything--"

Whether or not Yugi's cards were following their master Kaiba made a particular point not to notice. They'd hardly all fit in his private elevator anyway. "He'll talk to me," Kaiba said, punching the button for the garage, so Yugi had to sprint the last few paces to make it into the elevator before the doors closed. "If he knows anything, he'll tell me."

Yugi swallowed, nodded and didn't say anything.

Kaiba studied his blurry reflection in the polished silver of the elevator doors. Unambiguous black and white, tall and straight and collected. Sane.

The elevator's drop was dizzily nauseating, but he didn't let that stable image waver. He crossed his arms, hands clasping his biceps, so they couldn't shake. And steadfastly ignored Yugi's concerned gaze, the visions of his brother's corpse playing in his mind's eye, and the encouraging squeaks of the furry Kuriboh bouncing at his side.

* * *

_to be continued..._


	2. anything he does know, he'll tell me

They parked in the street, blocking the single lane since it was too narrow to pull off onto the curb. The driver stayed in the car while Kaiba, Yugi, and company disembarked onto the poorly lit sidewalk. Jounouchi met them at the mouth of the alley, ducked to murmur to Yugi, though he didn't take his eyes off Kaiba as he did.

Kaiba ignored that wary look, partly because it was just the bonkotsu, mostly because he was preoccupied with trying to figure out how a dragon the size of Red Eyes managed to fit in the close confines of the alley. One would think the wings would make it impossible.

Red Eyes Black Dragon, looming behind its master with its scarlet eyes glowing in the shadows, dipped its spiked head in an unmistakable nod to Kaiba. Kaiba steeled himself against the impulse to bow back. He was not going to start respecting figments of his overtired brain. Especially when they belonged to Jounouchi. Yugi's cards, however, being figments themselves, had no such compunctions, running or bouncing over to greet Red Eyes with distracting squeaks and waves.

"Yo, Kaiba! You there?" The bonkotsu was right in his face, snapping his fingers.

Kaiba tore his eyes from the hallucinatory spectacle, grabbed Jounouchi's arm and removed him from his personal space, with not quite enough force to actually snap his radius. "Where's the man?"

"Ouch." Jounouchi rubbed his wrist, then tilted his head towards further down the alley. "The guy's back there. Honda's making sure he's not going anywhere," and he flashed Kaiba a tight grin, an unexpectedly fierce expression that didn't correspond properly to Yugi's goofily naive buddies, though it did match the ferocity in the red eyes of his dragon. "He's not talking to us," Jounouchi went on, "but we figured you'd want a crack at him before we handed him over to the police."

"How do you know this is the right man?"

"Besides that we talked to the guy who sold him the taser that took out Mokuba's bodyguard? He told us he was the one who did it. He was boasting about the job until he realized our interest was--personal, and then he shut up.

"But, listen, Kaiba." Jounouchi took his arm, then realized what he was doing and let go before Kaiba could throw him off again, went on, "You should know--this guy, he's the one who actually snatched Mokuba, but he was hired to do it by someone else. He might not know where Mokuba is now--"

"But anything he does know, he'll tell me." Anything was better than nothing at all.

"Kaiba-kun," Yugi said--dammit, there were two of him again, and Kaiba resisted the urge to rub his eyes, knowing it wouldn't help the way they both were looking at him. "Maybe we should let the police..."

Kaiba didn't even have to say anything; the pharaoh shook his head at his partner, and the smaller Yugi's mouth closed with a snap. Like Yugi could see his other self as well as Kaiba could. Wonderful. Now they were experiencing shared delusions. He'd thought at least Yugi had sense enough to sleep last night.

And he didn't have time for this. Growling under his breath, Kaiba strode past the Yugis and Jounouchi, deliberately not looking up at the Red Eyes, which graciously moved its massive, thorny talon to let him pass.

The thug was cornered behind a dumpster, a motorcycle blocking his best escape route, while Honda kept watch over him, cracking his knuckles. The man had already experienced a taste of that deterrent, Kaiba noted; he was a rough sort, with a disjointed nose that must have been broken a long time before, but some of his other bruises were fresh. Kaiba guessed that the marks that didn't match Honda's fists would fit to the bonkotsu's, judging by the way the man's eyes darted apprehensively to Jounouchi. He was big man, only a couple centimeters less than Kaiba's height and brawny to the point of being obese, but there was definite caution in his face as he looked at Yugi's friends, a wariness that was surprisingly close to being fear.

Surprising, little unexpected, maybe, but Kaiba hardly objected. Even if he wasn't about to say so to them.

The man's gaze finally made it to him, and he frowned. "Who the hell's this? I told you, I don't blab about my employers to any--"

"Hey, Kaiba," Honda said, as Jounouchi slouched over to join him.

"Kaiba?" The thug did a double take, staring at him. "What the hell is Kaiba Seto doing here--aw, shit, is this because the kid was coming out of your arcade place when I grabbed him? Are his parents suing?"

"He doesn't know who he kidnapped?" Yugi asked from behind him. Kaiba didn't need to look to know his violet eyes would be round with disbelief.

Jounouchi shrugged, not as surprised as his friend. "He just grabbed who he was hired to, ain't that right?" and he leaned over the motorcycle to elbow the man in the side, hard enough to make him wince. Must be a tender spot. Kaiba's eyes narrowed approvingly.

"Hey, I was working off a snapshot, I don't ask for names," the man said. "Not like I'm throwing them a birthday party, what do I look like, a clown? It was just a rich brat--"

"Next time you should ask," Honda told him. "That rich brat's name is Kaiba Mokuba."

"K-kaiba?"

Jounouchi nodded. "Right. And this guy here's his big brother. So, now that you're introduced," another elbow to the ribs, another enjoyable wince from the man, "we'll give you two a chance to...talk."

"Jounouchi-kun--" Yugi started to say, still behind him.

"Don't worry, Yugi," Jounouchi said. "I forgot to call the cops before, we should do that now. They'll be wanting this guy. Especially after what he was telling us before, about how this wasn't his first job. They'll probably come for him pretty fast. Maybe ten minutes," and he nodded at Kaiba, his smile hard, still fierce.

It would be more than enough. Kaiba nodded in return, his gaze fixed on the man, who was stammering, "H-hey, it was just a job--"

Honda headed after Jounouchi, stopping before Kaiba only long enough to say, "Don't feel like you have to or anything, Kaiba, but, if you could," and he glanced back at the man, with Jounouchi's same hard grin, "save some for us?"

Kaiba didn't answer. The thug had leaned back until his back was pressed against the wall behind him, like he was trying to will his hefty carcass through the brick. Almost like he could see the dragon looming up over him, black wings spread.

"Now," Kaiba said, evenly, as Honda's footsteps faded down the alley after his two friends'. "Who hired you?"

The man swallowed, straightened up to face him. Kaiba watched the squinty eyes going over him, measuring their respective differences in mass. Calculating his chances for escape. His thoughts were pasted all over his blunt face--Kaiba was no street punk like the others, just a spoiled rich kid...

Kaiba shifted, setting his stance. Try. Let him try. He needed the exercise. He needed more than the exercise. Almost four days, and this worthless excuse for street trash had been the one--if those meaty fists had silenced his brother--

"I said," the man said, licking his lips, rocking forward onto his toes as he readied himself to make his move, telegraphing the feint clear as a radio tower, "I'm not gonna sell out my--"

Whatever he was saying was drowned out by an echoing roar. Kaiba looked up and saw a gleam of silvery white scales reflecting the streetlights around the corner, the belly of the Blue Eyes White Dragon gliding over the alley, too big a hallucination to land.

At least it wasn't more of Yugi's cards. Red Eyes bellowed in response, though it sounded more like a greeting than a challenge.

"What are you looking at..." The thug also looked up, frowning. Saw nothing, of course, and took the chance to make his move, lunging forward with his fists swinging.

Kaiba smirked, a tight humorless quirk of his mouth, tore his eyes from the magnificence of his dragon, and stopped the man.

* * *

"You sure this is the right way, Kaiba?" Jounouchi asked, peering out the car's tinted windows. "To where the guy said he brought Mokuba?"

Yugi threw a glance at Kaiba, told his friend, "I'm sure it must be, Jounouchi-kun."

Kaiba saw no need to verify it, since he had told them so once already. Hardly his fault if the idiot hadn't been paying attention.

After Yugi and his friends' call, the police had turned up in less than ten minutes; eight, by Kaiba's watch. It had been enough time with two minutes to spare. They had waited only long enough for the police to put cuffs on the man, before getting into Kaiba's car. Or rather, Kaiba had gotten back in his car, and somehow not only Yugi but the bonkotsu as well had ended up in the back seat with him. The driver had pulled into the street before he could get them out again, and now that they were in motion it would be more trouble than it was worth to rid himself of them.

Though he was considering it. "But are we sure it's right, even if it's what the guy said?" Jounouchi asked, again. "What if he messed up and gave the wrong address?"

"He was looking pretty shook up," Yugi admitted.

"Yeah. Especially the way he was shrieking about dragons, or whatever that was." Jounouchi frowned. "What the hell did you do to that guy anyway, Kaiba?"

Maybe at the next red light he could just open the door and shove them both out. Honda was following on his bike; he could pick them up.

"But I don't think Kaiba-kun could have done that much," Yugi said. "I mean, he didn't look hurt--er, any _more_ hurt--and it was only six minutes..."

"Hey, I'm not complaining," Jounouchi said. "The guy deserved it. Mokuba's our friend, too. I'm just curious about the dragons."

"Maybe he was just talking about, um, Kaiba-kun's coat," Yugi said. "It sort of looks like wings sometimes...?"

Maybe he shouldn't wait for a red light.

If Kaiba leaned back in his seat he could see the sky above the streetlights, the great luminescent white form gliding over the car. He shook his head, reminded himself that he wasn't supposed to be admiring hallucinations. Leaning back was a poor idea anyway. Just sitting down was bad enough. Too easy for his eyes to slip closed. He blinked them hard, automatically stifled a yawn.

"Shouldn't we have told the police where we were going, though?" Yugi asked.

"No," Kaiba said.

"Probably shouldn't yet," Jounouchi filled in the following pause, when Kaiba declined to. "If they went in with sirens, it'd let the guys who've got Mokuba know we're coming for them, if they're still around. And the cops would need to get a warrant first anyhow."

"We can take care of this ourselves," Yugi assured Yugi--the pharaoh was back, sitting on the seat opposite his other self with his arms crossed, and his expression crosser. "They will not get away with this."

"Whoever _they_ are," Kaiba muttered, and realized it had been aloud when the others gave him odd looks. Not that he wasn't used to getting pointed looks from the lot of them anyway, but these regards were different, in a decidedly irritating way. Like they weren't actually angry at him--because they were too busy being pissed at those responsible. It better be that, and not something like they were feeling sorry for him. He wasn't that pathetic. Even insane. Even losing.

His hands were clenched around each other, fingers digging into the tendons. Almost four days and the thug hadn't even been able to tell him why. Just that he had been hired to kidnap a boy; for ransom, he had assumed, but hadn't bothered to inquire. It had gone smoothly, the man had said. He hadn't hurt the kid, just gagged him and tied him up and delivered him, and that had been the end of it, for him.

The end of it. Kaiba's hands had been around the man's thick neck; if the Blue Eyes hadn't growled...

"We will get Mokuba back, Kaiba," the other Yugi said, looking directly at him. Even the pharaoh didn't look angry at him for once, though he was still scowling.

Kaiba looked away. Not polite to stare. Especially at someone who wasn't there.

"We will," the original Yugi added softly. "It'll be okay. _He'll_ be okay, Kaiba-kun."

Outside the car, overhead, the Blue Eyes roared, just as his driver said, "We're here, sir."

* * *

_to be continued..._

Welcome to fanfic cliche theater! Thank you for the reviews - was happy to see familiar names, Jean-Luc Lover (Picard, I presume?), SeaGull, Tawnykit, Yami no Mira - and everyone else, too, glad to have you on board for this one! And Joon, you like YGO as well? Hee! Hope I can continue to entertain. Kaiba's a terrifically enjoyable character to write, and I'm glad to know you think I'm keeping him sufficiently himself, hope I can keep that up. Though I can't help but feel guilty for turning Mokuba into the damsel in distress - I'm sorry, Mokuba, I do love you too, it's just that your nii-sama is so much fun _when he's losing his mind..._


	3. that might not be his blood

The address, in the warehouse district by Domino Port, turned out to be a two-floor stockroom. The padlocked entrance was watched by an elderly security guard, who emerged from his little box booth as they approached, holding up his hand. "I'm sorry, sirs, no one is allowed inside this late without a key."

"No problem," Jounouchi said, turned to Kaiba and whispered, "Gimme a _man-en_."

Kaiba handed over a bill, preoccupied by the dragons gliding overhead. Red Eyes had followed them as well and now perched on the warehouse roof, twisting its horned head down on its long neck to peer into the dark second story windows. The Blue Eyes was still circling.

He didn't hear anyone inside the building. Nor did the dragons, else they would have done something by now, he should think.

Jounouchi was talking to the gray-haired guard, displaying the ten thousand yen note. "Why don't you just give us your keys and treat yourself to dinner and a late night movie? We'll be gone by the time you get back, promise. We're just looking for someone."

The guard eyed him. "Sir, there's no one inside. And if you are attempting to bribe me, I regretfully must inform you that I will call the police on your punk asses."

"Uh." Jounouchi stuffed the offending bill into his pocket and backed away, whispered to Honda, "I think we could take him..."

"No way!" Honda whispered back, "I'm not beating up some poor old guy. Besides, look at those whiskers, what if he's a kung fu master or something?"

"Point. Hey, Yugi, your other you isn't in a shadow game mood, is he?"

Kaiba sighed, walked up to the man himself. He looked over his shoulder into the guard's booth--antique computer probably as old as he was, and just a radio, not even a TV--then looked back to the man. "What are you making working here, seventeen hundred thousand a year? Eighteen? Seventeen, right. Starting salary for Kaiba Corporation security is three million yen, with full benefits. Experienced guards start at thirty-four. More if you're willing to work with children."

The man stared at him, then said, awkwardly, "My grandsons are three and five, I enjoy babysitting them..."

"Excellent." Kaiba pulled out his checkbook, scribbled a reasonable amount and added a zero for good measure, signed the check and handed it over. "There's your contract and signing bonus, you start tomorrow evening at Kaiba Land. Where are the keys?"

The guard gaped at the check, hesitated almost half a second and then dropped the ring into his outstretched hand. "But, sir," he said, touching his cap politely, "as I said, there's nobody inside. The last folks left before I got here tonight."

"Who owns these offices?"

"The building's owned by my employer--previous employer. But the offices inside are rented out to small businesses and organizations needing temporary shipping rooms or storage and the like. I think all eight are leased to different people at the moment, sir."

Most of the small warehouse was taken up by a loading dock big enough for half a dozen cars or a couple trucks. Kaiba and the others spread around the floor, unlocked the doors of the eight private offices and switched on the lights. Five of the offices were equipped with desks or tables; two had boxes stacked on shelves; and the last was empty but for a broken filing cabinet and a couple folding chairs leaning in one corner. All were deserted; as the guard had told them, there was no one in the building now.

No one except Black Magician, standing beside the last office door, arms folded and staff in hand. He ducked his head to Yugi in a definite, if unnoticed bow, then nodded at Kaiba in a way that was just as definitely not a bow, and motioned for him to enter.

Kaiba ignored him. Outside he glimpsed the Blue Eyes touching down on the pavement, curving its neck to peer inside through the stockroom's raised garage door. Kaiba stepped aside to let it see the useless emptiness of the final room. "There's nothing," he said. The dragon rumbled.

"You say something, Kaiba? What're you looking at? Somebody out there?" Jounouchi glanced out the garage door, oblivious to the Blue Eyes' growl, then shrugged and pushed past Kaiba into the last office. Standing in the center, he turned an exploratory circle with his hands in his pockets. "Doesn't look like anything's in here."

"No," Kaiba said, following him into the room anyway.

"That guy might not have been lying about bringing Mokuba here. But if this place was just the drop-off point, it was a few days ago, they'd be long gone by now. I mean, they wouldn't have wanted to keep him here too long, with other people around."

Obviously. Kaiba couldn't be bothered to answer something so self-evident. The bonkotsu wasn't saying anything, just barking to fill up the silence. He preferred his dragon's growls, real or not.

"Hey, Kaiba. You with me?" And now Jounouchi was gawking at him. Kaiba realized he had been staring out the door at the Blue Eyes again. Tearing his eyes from the dragon's shining gaze, he subjected Yugi's friend to an unapproachable glare. This had about as much effect as it ever did, that is to say, none whatsoever. Jounouchi leaned forward instead of taking a step back, frowned into his face. "Geeze, have you been sleeping at all, Kaiba? You look like shit."

"That's unfortunate," Kaiba returned, "I might end up being mistaken for you."

Then nearly lost his balance when Jounouchi whacked him on the back. "There you go!" For some reason he sounded bizarrely cheered. "_That's_ the real Kaiba!"

"Who the hell else would it be?"

"I know what you're going through, Kaiba. I'm a big brother, too, you know; I'd be climbing the walls now if I were in your shoes. But it's gonna be okay. Like Yugi said, we'll get Mokuba back. So you just hang in there."

Black Magician had joined them in the office, and was now insistently gesturing for Kaiba to approach. Kaiba grimaced. "I'm hardly in such a state that I'd need your encouragement."

"Or our help, either, right?" Jounouchi shrugged. "But Mokuba does. So here we are. You're a smart guy, even if you don't _need_ us, why look a gift horse in the mouth? Don't you business-types have a term for that? 'Exploiting all available assets' or something?"

"'Assets'? I believe the word you're looking for is 'annoyances'."

Jounouchi just elbowed his shoulder again. "Yeah, that's the spirit." He leaned in closer, dropped his voice to a confidential mutter. "If you need to take it out on us to keep it together, then you do that. Like I said. I understand."

"I don't want your understanding," Kaiba said through gritted teeth.

Jounouchi flashed him a grin. "Which is why I'm giving it to you." A wicked grin, and yet there was no malice in it at all. Like their mutual hatred was some kind of a joke they both were in on.

Black Magician coughed, insistently loud, then raised his staff. He was frowning, and the head of the staff might have been glowing as he pointed it at Kaiba, very like the initialization of his primary attack. Kaiba took a step back from that glimmer, before reason could override instinct.

Jounouchi, however, oblivious to the nonexistent threat, had been taking a step forward at the same time; the result was that he walked into Kaiba. Kaiba automatically shoved him away, and Jounouchi stumbled back into the filing cabinet, knocking it over with a loud clatter and an outraged squawk from Jounouchi as he went tumbling backwards over it.

Black Magician's staff came down, clanging against the metal seat of one of the folding chairs, loudly enough that Kaiba started. Had anyone else heard that--but of course they wouldn't. And certainly not over the noise Jounouchi was making as he struggled to get up and right the cabinet, which now sported two broken drawers instead of one, according to his swearing.

Kaiba registered this slapstick only peripherally, and paid no more attention to the shouts and pounding footsteps as Jounouchi's friends came running. Black Magician was staring at him adamantly, but Kaiba wasn't looking at the face of the card, either. Something glittered in the folding chair's joists, just under where the staff had tapped the seat.

He grabbed the chair, seat and back, and pried it halfway open, enough to untangle the string wrapped around the steel piping. It was arranged too carefully to have merely fallen; it must have been deliberately tied, in such a position that the seat blocked it from most angles, so it had gone unnoticed. Though the knots were clumsy, fastened by fingers fumbling blind. Someone sitting in the chair, perhaps with their hands bound behind their back, could have just managed to wrap the cord in such a way.

Kaiba picked the knots loose, senselessly careful not to break the string. The tremors in his hands had stilled, or else he had stopped noticing them in his concentration. Vaguely he was aware of Honda and the two Yugis crowding into the office behind him, though they were ignoring him anyway, bunched around their friend, helping him up. "Jounouchi, are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, just tripped--"

"Oh, man, look at this," Honda muttered, metal corners screeching painfully against the cement floor as he shoved the file cabinet aside.

"Is that..." Yugi swallowed.

"Blood," his other self answered grimly.

Kaiba looked over, straightened and crossed to them in two long strides.

"It was in the filing cabinet, they must've just stashed it there..." Honda showed the tangled length of rope, held in his hands with the dainty repugnance with which one would handle a dead rat. It had been tied in knots and then cut, the severed loops just wide enough to have wrapped around small wrists.

The rough, fibrous cording was dotted with flaking rusty brown. "Kaiba-kun," Yugi was saying, somewhere too near, all tremulous concern, "it's not...it's going to be..."

"Kaiba, it's okay," Jounouchi was saying on his other side. "We don't know for sure that Mokuba was here, that might not be his blood..."

Black Magician said nothing, his head lowered, staff slanted in the crook of his folded arms.

"No," Kaiba said. "Mokuba was here. They brought him here. They held him here," and he raised his hand, the unknotted string looped around his fingers so the pendant dangled over his knuckles, gilt edges catching the light, the card-shaped locket an exact match to the one hanging around his own neck.

* * *

to be continued...

Much thanks for the reviews! Mm, dragons...now I need to get to bed before I start seeing them myself. Hope you're still enjoying the story! (If anyone was wondering, it's really just urban legend that any amount of sleep deprivation can make you 'legally' insane. There's no governmentally recommended limit; though as any grad student can tell you, there are pretty pronounced, if temporary, psychological and physiological reactions to going too long without sleep. Don't imitate Kaiba, boys and girls, he's an experienced professional in the art of mental instability!)


	4. do you recognize him?

"Who was renting the northernmost office in the last week?"

"Beg your pardon, sir...?" The security guard squinted at Kaiba through the square window of his booth. "Hey, are you feeling all right? You're looking a little..."

"Who was renting that office?" Kaiba repeated, wondering if the man might hear him better if he smashed that window.

Jounouchi rapped his knuckles on the glass, though too lightly to shatter it. "Just get the records, man. He's your boss now, right? So it's all good." He threw a quick glance over his shoulder at Kaiba, turned back and muttered, "And I'd hurry it up."

Black Magician had followed them back outside to the guard's booth. The Blue Eyes and Red Eyes were both watching, wings half-spread, as if they were just waiting for the word to take to the air. But as yet there was no obvious place for them to go.

The guard knelt behind his desk to go through the files, then stood again and unlatched the window. "Office six, right? Here you go." He handed over a sheath of papers. "That's the last year's worth of contracts. Looks like a private firm has it now, only for the month--"

Kaiba yanked the folder from his gnarled hands, leafed through the typed forms, scattering paper on the ground. The guard might have made a noise of protest, and Jounouchi might have advised him _sotto voce_ to let it go, and Yugi might have crouched to pick up the fallen papers before the night breeze carried them off, but Kaiba only had concentration enough to focus on the one sheet with the current date. Hayashi Kazuo wasn't a name he recognized; nor the Hayashi Shipping Co. But that was almost certainly just a cover, and the name likely assumed.

Police records might have the alias listed. It probably would be quicker to hack into their database than to go through the proper channels. But he would need to return to the office for that; his laptop didn't have the processing power.

"Can I see it, Kaiba-kun?" Yugi asked tentatively, getting back to his feet with the stack of gathered pages rustling in his hands. "I've been going through all those employee records, maybe I'd recognize the name?"

Kaiba knew he wouldn't, but it was easier just to shove the folder at him than to say so. The Blue Eyes' tail was lashing like a giant angry house cat's, impatience in its mantled wings as it looked down at them. The guard in the booth shifted uneasily, glancing up in a perplexed way and then away, almost as if he could sense that draconic glare even if he couldn't see it.

Yugi, on the other hand, seemed entirely oblivious to Black Magician leaning down to peer the file over his shoulder, though at the same time he was whispering to the phantom copy of himself standing on his other side. Though Black Magician appeared every bit as substantial as the pharaoh, and Kaiba wondered if maybe the Yugis simply weren't paying attention.

And watching them, trying to figure out the logic of something as patently illogical as hallucinations, was making his headache that much worse, so Kaiba turned away instead. Unfortunately that meant he ended up looking toward Jounouchi, who made a gesture that was meant to be either rude or encouraging. Probably the latter, as he followed it up by saying, "We've almost got 'em, Kaiba," though he offered no hint of how he expected this to be the case, just a weak smile.

Honda beside him was still holding the blood-spotted length of rope. Jounouchi elbowed his friend in the ribs, muttered, "Get rid of that!"

"But it's evidence, isn't it," Honda muttered back.

"'Then hide it or something. It's upsetting...you know." Jounouchi tipped his head significantly toward Kaiba, as if he were both deaf and blind and wouldn't notice. "I mean, even more..."

"--You're right, he does look familiar."

Kaiba turned back around. Yugi and his translucent counterpart were frowning down at the paper in their hands. Yugi had flipped the form over; stapled to the back was a xerox of the renter's driver's license, and they were both studying the tiny black and white photo of the man. "We've seen him before. Though I don't think it was any of the employee records we've looked at," Yugi mused.

"Perhaps we met him in person somewhere," the pharaoh remarked. He raised his head to meet Kaiba's gaze. "Kaiba, do you recognize him?"

"I don't know, let me see," Kaiba said, taking the page back and ignoring the decidedly odd look Yugi was giving him, as well as the pharaoh's triumphant nod. Probably thinking that getting his imaginary self acknowledged counted as a victory. He had always suspected that Yugi was secretly out to drive him mad.

That was inconsequential right now. He did recognize the man. Kaiba's facial recognition wasn't as faultlessly eidetic as his memory for numbers or the written word, but he had made a point of memorizing this individual last year. In Battle City he had kept careful track of all the competitors, but some in particular had been especially significant.

If they had truly taken Mokuba...considered with the lack of ransom demands, he could make several hypotheses why they might have wanted his brother, none at all reassuring, and the worst of them...

This was supposed to have been ended. Battle City was to have put a stop to this; the pharaoh had laid it all to rest, standing victorious before Malik on the Duel Tower. This was supposed to be over, the thought hadn't crossed his mind, and he was furious with himself for not realizing it sooner, for not checking into this possibility already. Furious, in the parts of himself left which hadn't gone too cold to feel anything at all.

If they had gotten what they wanted from his brother already...or if they had decided they couldn't get it...or if this had been a plot of vengeance after all, restitution for their failure a year past...

"Do you recognize that man, Kaiba?" the other Yugi asked again; whether he was real or not was meaningless, because the others actually present were asking the same question. Though none of those three were speaking it aloud, just in their eyes, Yugi and his two friends staring at Kaiba hushed, as if they were listening for something in his motionless silence.

"I know him," Kaiba said, and the words came out crisp and hard-edged, though fragile enough to shatter in his throat. "He's a Ghoul."

* * *

_to be continued..._

_I wanted to have the next scene be part of this chapter as well, but it ended up longer than expected and I'm not entirely happy with it, need to retool it a bit. So this is a short chapter, but I should have the next one up soon-ish. In case you've been wondering what's been happening to poor Mokuba-kun...  
As always, can't thank everyone enough for the reviews. MikaSamu, Peacewish, J-L Lover, and everyone else who's mentioned the story's making them laugh in spite of themselves, glad to hear it. Humor doesn't always come easy to me, but Kaiba's attitude carries this story without much help from me at all! It might get more serious later...then again, it might not. Guess we'll find out when we get there! _


	5. all he had to do was wait

Ghouls. He had been taken by Ghouls. And now maybe they were going to let him die.

The abduction itself had been so fast Mokuba hardly had realized what was happening. He hadn't even seen the guy who grabbed him. Fujita had just gone down, dropping like a rock, and before Mokuba could even call his bodyguard's name a rough hand had clamped over his mouth, and the sharp blade of a knife had been pressed to his neck. Immobilized by that threat, he was dragged into the waiting van.

The guy was indisputably a professional; he had been blindfolded and tied up in a minute flat, his wallet and keys and switchblade removed from his pockets. Then they had driven off, Mokuba lying in the back of the van, jarred by the bumps and turns of the road and struggling not to panic. It was hard enough to breathe through the gag in his mouth and he couldn't risk choking. Instead he counted in his head in the rattling darkness, keeping track of the minutes passing so he would have some idea how far they had driven. How far his brother would have to search.

After about a quarter of an hour the van stopped, the doors were opened and the rough hands grabbed him again, throwing him over a broad shoulder like he was a sack. He tried kicking the guy's solar plexus, but the blindfold made it hard to aim, and with his legs bound he couldn't get good leverage. He was dropped into a chair, a tight grip around his arms holding him down while someone else retied him to the metal frame. Voices talking, money being exchanged. Then the footsteps tromped out and a door closed, leaving him alone.

He tried shouting through the gag and rocking the chair to make noise, but only succeeded in banging his head painfully hard against the wall behind him, and no one came. He had a beacon pinned into the waistband of his jeans, but depending on how far inside he was, the tracking system might not be able to receive the signal.

The voices had said something about picking him up later. Probably whoever had hired the pro would leave Mokuba here long enough to ensure that the man hadn't been followed, before incriminating themselves by taking possession of their purchase.

Wise move on their part. Because by now his brother would surely be looking for him, and he would not be inclined to be lenient to anyone responsible for this kidnapping. After a couple hours tied and blindfolded, with his bruises smarting from the jostling in the van, Mokuba was not particularly inclined toward leniency himself.

Worse than the bruises was the sting of embarrassment. It was an insult to KaibaCorp to have such an easily abducted vice president. His brother was going to be furious--not at him, but Mokuba couldn't help but feel culpable all the same. His brother wouldn't have allowed himself to get grabbed, not that easily. Admittedly Mokuba had a good deal of growing to do before he would be as tall or strong as the elder Kaiba, but it still frustrated.

A hired thug implied money was behind this, an organization, or a wealthy individual. Probably not a ransom from Kaiba Corp, then; more likely it was to blackmail his brother into something or other. One would think their rivals would have learned the lesson by now, that his brother and their company could not be so manipulated. But as his brother often groused, there was no lack of stupid people in the world.

His brother would be coming. It was easy to suppress his fear, even alone and bound and unable to see, when he knew for certain that his brother would come, as soon as he became aware of the trouble. All Mokuba had to do was wait. His brother had told him before that in such a situation, survival was his priority. Escape if he could, but being a Kaiba wasn't about running away. It was about winning. And this kind of game you won by making it out alive.

Knowing there would be a search, Mokuba realized that he should leave some sign behind, in case he was moved before his brother located this place. It took a good deal of squirming and twisting in the chair to get his locket off, and he scratched his wrists on the rough rope until he felt blood slicking his fingers, but he managed to tie the string to the underside of the chair, only minutes before he heard a key rattle in the door.

Several sets of footsteps entered, but none were his brother's confident strides, and he hid his flickering hope back within his heart before it could be extinguished. "Good evening, Kaiba-san," a gravelly, unfamiliar man's voice said, as strange hands cut him loose from the chair and picked him up. "Are you ready for new accommodations?"

They kept him blindfolded for the ride, finally dragged him from the automobile into warm night air, then carried him inside and up a flight of stairs. He was dropped like a sack of flour onto a tile floor, and the blindfold was untied and the gag removed. Mokuba coughed and wiped his eyes, and someone handed him a plastic cup of water, which he drank greedily before it occurred to him it might be drugged.

"Sorry for the delay," said the man who had spoken before. He and the two men with him were all wearing black face masks, but he was a fairly tall, thin individual with stringy dark hair. "We wanted to wait until after dark to move you."

Mokuba glared up at him and said nothing, studying all of them from his position kneeling on the floor. The door behind them was ajar, but his limbs were cramped and sore, and he wouldn't get far with his wrists and ankles still tied. Three was too many; he might be able to trip one or two of them if he caught them by surprise, but not all three. They also might be armed, and not yet knowing what they wanted him for, he didn't know how expendable they considered him to be. They hadn't killed him yet, but neither had they taken particular care with him thus far.

The man crouched over him, took out a pocket knife and cut the bonds around his wrists, then patted his shoulder. "There you go. I hope the trip here wasn't too uncomfortable. It must have been scary, but you're our guest now. If you answer our questions, Kaiba-san, you won't get hurt."

Questions. Not a ransom or blackmail, then. And they seemed to know exactly who he was--they had wanted him after all, not something from his brother.

Well, at least it would be a change of pace.

His number one priority was survival. And his brother was coming for him. Those were the only things that mattered now.

"What do you want?" Mokuba asked, his voice raspy. His mouth was still dry from the gag, even after the water. Didn't matter, because he wouldn't be talking much anyway. Whatever they wanted to know, he wasn't about to tell them.

But he didn't put that in his tone, just the tremulous fear they would expect from a kid, and the masked men nodded approvingly. "Nothing too important," their spokesman said. "Just a couple computer codes. Specifically the passwords to the KaibaCorp satellite network that uplinks to the duel disks."

Mokuba stared at the man, trying to look childishly confused, when really he was thinking hard. He had already noticed the outlines of card cases in their pockets, and one of them wore a wristband of the sort often worn under a duel disk's straps. They were dressed in regular clothes, shirts and jeans, not the crazy cult robes of Malik's gang in Battle City, but he had a hunch. A nauseating sinking feeling in his gut. "What you mean," he said, "I don't know any codes--"

"Don't play the dumb kid, Mr. KaibaCorp Vice President," the man interrupted. "You were managing the network in Battle City; you had to have the entry codes. We want administrator-level access to the holo-projection databases and the central duel regulator."

That had cinched it. Ghouls. Rival companies might have use for their codes, but with those exact specifics, they didn't want to copy or sabotage the network. They were trying to hack into it. The Rare Hunters' collections of copy cards had been rendered useless after Battle City; Mokuba and his brother had worked for weeks to make sure that the duel disk system would reject all fakes, no matter how well-crafted. If the Ghouls could reprogram the system, they could again put their copies into play.

This wasn't just about dueling, naturally. Fortunes would be on the line. More than just the pro tournaments they could win with an endless supply of powerful rare cards. If they could pass off the fakes as the real thing, the counterfeit business would make them a mint.

And ruin the game, and probably KaibaCorp. They had only just managed to recover their reputation after the situation with Dartz; if the legitimacy of the duel disk system was cast into doubt, Duel Monsters might well be over, and Kaiba Corporation with it.

No way in hell would Mokuba ever allow that to happen. Not to his brother's company, or his brother's game. Never.

Naturally he said none of that to the Ghouls. Rather than outright refusing them, he continued to insist he didn't know what they were talking about. That first night, they didn't do anything to him, at last just left him in the room alone.

Mokuba had been grabbed by the Ghouls before. This was problematic, because not only were they sure of his knowledge about the satellite system, they also knew what to expect of him. This time they had put him in a little whitewashed room that might be an old maintenance closet. There were no windows or air vents large enough that he might escape through them, just a couple narrow ducts high on the wall, and a small round drain in the floor in one corner. His ankles were still bound, and though he worked at the knots for hours he couldn't loosen them.

There was no furniture, just the tile floor and a couple empty cardboard boxes. The door was thick metal, not even shuddering when he lay on his back to kick it as hard as he could with his tied feet. He finally sat on one of the boxes to crush it, curled up on the flattened cardboard for the night, with the light bulb overheard burning dimly.

It was hard to sleep without his locket. He was used to the string around his neck, kept jerking awaking whenever he reached for it and grasped empty air.

They brought him a few store-bought riceballs the next morning, which he wolfed down in seconds, not having had anything to eat since the lunch he had missed the day before. They were initially quite pleasant about their questions, though he didn't bother to return the courtesy. If they had grabbed him instead of his brother because they thought that Mokuba's age would make him more pliable, that was their own stupidity. He told them as much, and a good deal more beside, while still insisting he didn't know a damn thing.

They took his insults, and waited until after lunch before they started to hit him. Mokuba got bored of calling them things in Japanese and English and moved on to German and Chinese, where his grammar was shakier but his vocabulary was adequately extensive, thanks to KaibaCorp's various overseas negotiations and his brother's impressively short patience. By nightfall--he presumed, not being able to see outside--he hadn't yet exhausted his store of profanity, though he kept having to spit out the blood that oozed into his mouth from his split lip. They didn't give him any dinner.

They didn't bring him any breakfast the next morning, either. There wasn't time for that to trouble him; he had bigger concerns. The three Ghouls had entered with their faces unmasked.

Mokuba recognized the man with the stringy hair as a Ghoul who had competed in Battle City; the other two were strangers. But that wasn't what made his heart pound in his chest. He was a witness now. Having seen their faces, he could identify them to his brother or to the police, and they would know this. Which meant that they weren't planning on letting him have the chance.

Before, they might have been planning to release him once they had their questions answered. For whatever reasons, that plan had changed. Which made it all the more crucial that he didn't tell them anything. Because once they had what they wanted from him, they had no reason to keep him alive.

And his brother hadn't found him yet.

They didn't feed him anything that day. His stomach growled, but that was just one more ache added to what he had already collected. He could deal. He was surviving. These Ghouls were nothing. He had survived Pegasus's dungeon, even losing his soul, and he hadn't known his brother was trying to save him then. The future of Kaiba Corporation depended on him; his brother was counting on him; there was no way in hell he was going to answer their questions, even if they cut off all his fingers.

He told them so, and spat in the skinny man's face. The black eye was worth it, even if it throbbed when he tried to sleep that night, swelling up with no ice to put on it.

He woke up to it aching. The light overhead glowed unchanged, but it had to be morning by now, he thought. Except no one had come.

Mokuba had been trying to count the hours since, and was pretty sure most of the day had already gone by, but they hadn't come into the little room at all. He was still hungry, but that didn't worry him much. People could go a long time without food.

But they needed water to live. To survive. His throat had been dry yesterday, but he hadn't really felt thirsty since he had woken up this morning, and Mokuba didn't think that was a good sign.

Maybe the Ghouls weren't just ignoring him to soften him up for more of their questions. Maybe they had forgotten about him, deliberately. Had decided simply abandoning him here in this closet was easier than shooting him or poisoning him. Or maybe the police had captured them, or his brother--no, that couldn't be, because if his brother had them, then by now he would know where Mokuba was. His brother would have made them tell him. He would have come by now.

Maybe there had been an accident and the Ghouls all were dead and no one knew where he was, had no way of finding this place. He was in a warehouse or an old office building, he had guessed; the walls were reinforced with concrete. His beacon's signal didn't have a chance of carrying through such thick walls; there would be no way to track him. The trip here would have been too short for his location to be triangulated.

But his brother was going to find him somehow, nonetheless. His brother had promised long ago to protect him, and took that promise as seriously as he took his games. And his brother didn't lose any game. He never had, not to anyone except Yugi; never to anyone as stupid and weak as these Ghouls.

And how much stupider and weaker was he, that he had been caught by them at all--but Mokuba couldn't allow himself to think like that. Such thoughts were too close to giving up, and that would be even more pathetic. His brother might be able to forgive him for getting into this mess, but giving up, giving in, letting them win--that would be unforgivable. Mokuba couldn't bear to think of his brother losing at all, but it would be infinitely worse if it were his fault.

Mokuba had lost track of how many times he had thought all this through. There wasn't much else to do but sleep and think, though both had become more difficult as the hours wore on. Not thirsty, but his tongue felt swollen in his mouth, and even sitting against the wall he felt dizzy. He was too tired to keep knocking on the door, not that anyone had come anyway, and his knuckles and feet were sore from it. He had tried picking the lock with the hard plastic tip of his shoelace, but though he had eventually heard it click, the door hadn't budged. They probably had wedged it shut with a chair or a board. There was nothing he could do here to save himself.

But his brother could do anything. His brother never lost, never failed. Mokuba just needed to make it until his brother found him. His brother wouldn't fail him, so he couldn't fail his brother.

Shivering--the room felt colder today than before--he wrapped his arms tighter around his chest, tucked his chin to his breast and tried to go to sleep. Sleeping made the time pass faster. And his brother would be that much closer when he awoke.

"Please, Nii-sama," he whispered, before he could help himself. "I'm waiting, just find me, please..."

* * *

_to be continued..._

_Thank you as always for the reviews - as per recent policy changes, I'll be forgoing individual responses in my author's notes (though I will answer questions if it seems like others might like the answers), but I can't see the harm in expressing my gratitude! Wouldn't be so quick to post this if it weren't for the wonderful feedback I've been getting.  
...Not that Mokuba appreciates quick posting. Poor boy. I feel a bit guilty. Also a bit nervous about what Kaiba will do to me, should he figure out that I'm actually the one behind this... _


	6. didn't have time for this

"It's ringing."

They had ended up returning to Kaiba's office; Yugi had forgotten his celphone there, which had the number, and Kaiba preferred to make the call on a secure line anyway. _They_, as it transpired, included not just Yugi and his pair of idiot friends, but a veritable crowd that was now filling up his office like some outrageously exotic masquerade. Flame Swordsman was talking up Black Magician Girl, his own Lord of Dragon was apparently nursemaiding the Baby Dragon, Black Magician was in unexpectedly serious conversation with Kuriboh and two bobbing Scapegoats, and Kaiba supposed he should be grateful that Honda didn't duel.

And that was just inside, to say nothing of the menagerie outside. If he had known this would be the case he might have reconsidered stacking his deck with so many dragons. Or else seen to it that his office had more windows. The first Blue Eyes had been joined by a second, as well as Emerald Dragon and Twilight Zone Dragon. Curse of Dragon was curled around the top frame, and he thought he had glimpsed Magician of Black Chaos riding between Red Eyes' black pinions, despite there having been no proper summoning ritual. If the third Blue Eyes showed up, there wouldn't be much space left for it to land.

He just hoped the God Cards kept out of mortal affairs. There definitely would not be room for their mass. Sturdy as the KC Building was, it had been designed to withstand earthquakes, not perching deities.

"Um, guys, it's ringing," Yugi said again, barely audible over the hubbub.

"Silence," Kaiba barked, and the room went quiet, everyone and everything present shutting up as they turned toward the desk.

Jounouchi and Honda blinked at him. "No need to shout, Kaiba, we're sitting right here--"

"Hello?" Yugi said suddenly into the phone. "Is that you, Malik-kun? It's Yugi. How are you? How's Egypt right now? ...Yes, I'm fine, but we have a problem--you see, Kaiba-kun's brother--oh, you heard?"

Kaiba hit the button to put the call over the speaker. "Rishid saw it on the news from Japan, and told me and my sister," Malik's disembodied voice sounded through the office. "We've all been worried. So he hasn't been found yet?"

"No," Yugi said, "but we're hoping you can help us."

"Of course," Malik said warmly, "however we can, though since we don't have any Millennium Items anymore, I'm not sure how much we could do--"

"Not like that," Yugi told him. "You see, the guys who have Mokuba-kun--we think they're your Rare Hunters."

There was a pause, and then Malik said, slowly, "Yugi, I swear to you, I disbanded the Ghouls. I haven't seen any of them since I left Domino after Battle City, and I would never order them to do anything to hurt you or any of your friends again--"

"Malik." When Kaiba looked, it was the other Yugi in place of his partner, regally straight even sitting in a chair high enough that his feet barely reached the ground. "We don't hold you responsible," the pharaoh declared. "We never suspected you were behind this now. But while you stopped leading them, there will always be criminals willing to exploit dueling for their own ends. The Rare Hunters would continue even without their leader. They'll not be redeemed, though you have been. Whatever new plot they needed Mokuba for, it had nothing to do with you."

"No. It is my fault," Malik said quietly. "I'm the one who organized them to begin with; they wouldn't be plotting at all if I hadn't..."

This would be faster with the Egyptian's damned lunatic personality. Less whining, at least. "How organized were you, Ishtar?"

"Kaiba?"

"Do you have records of the Rare Hunters who were under you?" Kaiba demanded. "Names, aliases, addresses? I'm guessing you didn't keep a club membership directory, but you were directing the Ghouls here from Egypt; you must have had contact information at least, listings of the places in the Domino area that were Ghouls property. Do you still have any of that?"

"Yes," Malik answered, after not too insufferable a pause. "I have everything. I turned my lists over to the police, but I still have copies. I'll fax them over immediately. Though..." He hesitated. "It has been going on a year, and a lot of the men I...used, they were criminals to begin with, that's why they were willing to join up at all. A lot of them would have gone underground, maybe gotten new identities..."

"I'm aware."

"Kaiba, if it is Ghouls who took Mokuba, if it was because of anything that happened in Battle City, really, I can't tell you how sorry I am--"

"I don't care about your contrition," Kaiba snapped. "All I need from you is information. I'm standing by for the fax." He gave the number, then shoved back his chair, stalked over to the fax machine on its shelf on the other side of his office. The cards stumbled and scurried out of his way.

Behind him he heard Yugi on the phone, babbling, "I'm sorry about that, Malik-kun, any help you can offer will be wonderful--Kaiba-kun will appreciate it, I know, he's just a little stressed right now."

"A _little_ stressed?" Jounouchi interjected, dropping his voice approximately three decibels lower than his usual ruckus, either in deference to the phone or to Kaiba's presence. "The guy is _this_ close to totally--"

"Geeze, can it, Jounouchi, he's still in the room!" Honda hissed.

Not that he was paying attention. Kaiba couldn't care less what they thought; if ever their opinion of him had mattered, he probably would have spontaneously combusted in front of Jounouchi by now. The fax started coming through; he grabbed the first page off the feed, scanned the hand-printed list. Malik's notes were in a mix of Arabic, English, and Japanese, but his handwriting was legible enough, and for a revenge-bent punk he had kept a thorough accounting of his underlings. Perhaps keeping close track of them had simplified the brainwashing process.

Malik sent twenty-two pages total, including several pages of property listings, most of which the leases had run out in the last year. Along with the few dozen aliases and personal details of Rare Hunters, it was a start, at least. Kaiba seated himself on the couch by the television, opened his laptop and started entering the names and associate information, cross-referenced with his own databases. Once the data was in the computer, he could run a pull from the city's property records and locate where the Ghouls' present hideouts might be.

Yugi and the others were still on the phone. Yugi was pushing, gently, as was his way, "Please, Malik, if you can think of anything you might've overheard, recently, or before..." But Malik wouldn't know anything else; he had severed his ties completely, closed that book of his life. He wouldn't remember much, not of what he would now be trying so hard to forget. Which Yugi couldn't understand, because the Ghouls had once been Malik's comrades, and to Yugi a comrade was a friend, someone to keep close in mind and heart. He wouldn't understand how deeply one could hate one's previous associates, one's previous existence.

Kaiba wasn't supposed to be listening to them anyway. Didn't have time for that; he shook his head, dropped his eyes down to the page again and forced his vision to focus. He typed rapidly, double-checking each line with a finger resting under the careful scrawl to mark his place, tuning out Yugi and the others thanking Malik for his trouble and the hallucinatory whisperings of the crowd of cards. Working focused and fast and efficient, and still when he completed one entry and checked his watch, more than three minutes had elapsed.

Three minutes for a single entry, and over forty left to do. More than two hours just to enter them, and then running the searches might take even longer, and he didn't have time for this. It was past one AM of the fourth day. Three and a half days that Mokuba had been in the hands of Ghouls.

Corpse eaters, in the old myths, but this modern breed had different tastes. Without Malik's mad ambition guiding them, the Rare Hunters wouldn't be motivated by revenge, but greed. And they hadn't demanded a ransom, which meant they wanted something else from his brother. The Ghouls had been at Battle City; they had seen Mokuba at work, would have a good idea of the kind of information he knew. Information they would have use for.

Three and a half days, and Mokuba would never tell them what they wanted, not if he thought it might damage Kaiba Corporation.

If Mokuba hadn't been the games commissioner at Battle City--but there was no point to second-guessing now. Nothing could change what had already been. Besides, even if his brother hadn't volunteered for the job, Kaiba would have asked him anyway; he had needed someone he trusted in a position that important.

Three and a half days, and now another minute and a half gone, when he should have been working, instead wasted gaping motionlessly at his computer screen like a halfwit. Kaiba reached for the current page, accidentally brushed the whole pile to the floor and cursed through clenched teeth, leaned down to pick up the papers.

Behind him he heard low voices. Yugi had hung up on Malik, and he couldn't identify the speakers now. That whisper might be Yugi, or might be his Black Magician; that mumble could be Jounouchi or Honda or Flame Swordsman or Lord of Dragon. Kaiba couldn't tell without looking and he didn't have time to look. Didn't have time for any of this, but it was hard to shut out those whispers when the sound of his own name kept catching his ear.

"--starting to look like he's just going to fall over. Seriously, have you gotten him to sleep at all?"

"I've tried, but...at least he's been eating, though--"

It shouldn't matter, he should just ignore it, but Kaiba was used to being alone in his office this late at night. Almost alone. Just the two of them should be here, not Yugi and the others jabbering. He gritted his teeth at the tone of those mutters, soft sympathetic bleating, like fingernails on a blackboard.

Gozaburo used to mimic that tone. _"Is this too much for you, boy? Will you be able to complete the assignment in time, or will you need an extra day?"_

_Weak_, that tone said. _You're not strong enough, you're not smart enough, you're not good enough to win._ And there was always a cost for losing, that tone reminded; always a punishment for failure, promised in that grating, mocking voice.

That was irrelevant now. His failure was irrelevant; that Yugi and his friends and all those hallucinatory cards knew he was failing--none of that mattered.

But he couldn't afford an extra day, or an extra minute. Mokuba didn't have time for this. Every wasted second was another second the Ghouls had his brother. All those myriad voices behind him were reminders of the only other voice he should be hearing in his office, that he wasn't, that he hadn't heard for more than three days.

"--the look in his eyes right now, I almost wouldn't be surprised if he just started--"

_Weak._. He had to focus.

One hand continued to type on the laptop's keyboard; his other reached to the coffee table for the next page, and fell instead on a knobby, hard lump. The paperweight Mokuba had given him a few months ago, a stoneware mold in the shape of a dragon curled around a rock. A stylized Blue Eyes, naturally. "I saw it in a catalogue and knew you needed it," his brother had said, grinning at him, all impish mischief, "you've got to collect them all, right?"

"--no way can he keep up like this, even if it is _Kaiba_, at this rate, he's going to--"

There were two Blue Eyes outside his window, but his office was filled with people who didn't belong here, and beings who didn't belong in this world at all, and the buzz of their unwanted voices filled his ears until he couldn't concentrate enough to read the words written before him.

"_Be quiet!_" The paperweight was a good half a kilo, hefted in his hand. Kaiba threw it, hard, at Black Magician's head.

His aim wasn't too badly compromised by fatigue, but naturally it didn't have any effect, passing through the card's nonexistent face without a ripple, much less a change in expression.

Outside one of the Blue Eyes roared, over the satisfying chime of glass breaking. Not the window, that was bulletproof anyway; the paperweight had smashed into one of the framed certificates on the wall, some award or another thanking Kaiba Corporation for its generous contributions to charity. One of Gozaburo's or one of his, Kaiba didn't know.

The roar died away, and there was, finally, complete silence in his office, but for the tinkle of a few last cracked shards of glass slipping from the wooden frame, and the ringing in his ears. The paperweight was hard enough it probably hadn't even chipped.

Everyone was looking at him. Yugi and his two friends. The cards were gone, no figures or furballs between him and the desk, nothing outside the window. Just Yugi and Jounouchi and Honda, staring at him open-mouthed.

Kaiba felt his lips twist into something that might be a smile, one like he hadn't made for a long time. Not the kind of smile Mokuba would return; the kind his brother would turn away from. But his brother wasn't here to see him lying with his face, the old deceptive charm. Except that back then Kaiba used to tell himself that he was feeling something. At least pleasure that his plans were working accordingly, satisfaction that he had the people around him duped. Now he was feeling nothing at all.

"Hey, Yugi," Jounouchi said into the silence, getting up from the chair, his clumsy footsteps loud and his hushed voice louder. "Where's the break room? If we're gonna be pulling an all-nighter I need coffee."

"Down the hall, second door on the right," Yugi said quietly.

"C'mon, Honda." Jounouchi gestured to his buddy and they sidled out of the office, glancing back over their shoulders at Yugi. Apprehensively, like they were wondering whether the next time they saw him his spiky-haired head would still be attached to his neck, but they left him behind anyway. True friendship only went so far, apparently.

"Kaiba-kun," said Yugi, after they were gone, still quietly, but audible, with no cards in the way.

"Do you think I have time to take a damn nap?" Kaiba growled, reseating himself before his laptop.

"I wasn't going to tell you to sleep, Kaiba," and that wasn't Yugi, not the ordinary Yugi, at least. The pharaoh, when Kaiba looked, but only him, opaque and physically substantial, his other self relievingly nowhere in sight. "I wouldn't presume to command you, and we're not here to interfere with what you have to do." Yugi spoke as seriously as always, but the note of challenge with which he usually addressed Kaiba was conspicuously, consciously absent from his tone.

_Weak._ Too weak for Yugi even to bother challenging him now, and Kaiba glared. "If you're not here to interfere, then why do you persist to?"

"I'm not meaning to," and that was almost an apology. Unheard of from him. "Just tell me what I can do, Kaiba." His sharp gaze was still the pharaoh's, but the careful manners made him sound disturbingly like his politer self.

"What you can do? Shut up and let me work."

Not so much as a flicker of answering irritation in the pharaoh's eyes. He didn't blink, just nodded. "All right."

And that was a challenge, even if not obvious in his expression. A dare, but Kaiba had long practice working with worse than the likes of an ancient pharaoh standing over him. Yugi was hardly tall enough to loom anyway. Kaiba bent back over the keyboard again, the current page spread on the table before him.

As he typed, Yugi came around the couch, picked up the papers still on the floor and shuffled them straight, carefully quiet. He waited until Kaiba had completed entering the present page and brushed it aside one-handed while rubbing his eyes clear, then asked him, "Should I put these into any kind of order for you?"

"Just give them to me." Kaiba yanked the pile from his hands.

The pharaoh let them go without protest, but said, "What are you actually doing with these papers, Kaiba?"

"Why do you want to know? " Kaiba flicked him a momentary glare before turning his attention to the next page. "So you can enjoy understanding how completely I fail?"

Yugi jerked, his calm patience disrupted, and that should have been a victory, but there was no satisfying rush of triumph. No feeling at all. And Yugi was so easy to provoke it hardly counted anyway.

"We want to help, Kaiba," Yugi said, mastering his temper with a visible act of will. "Perhaps I could type some of these in?"

"What does that read?" Kaiba shoved the page at him, pointing to a line of Arabic. "Or the English here, can you translate it? No? Then how do you expect to enter it correctly?"

"You must have KaibaCorp employees who knows English," the pharaoh said, calm, that brief spark of temper faded. "And Arabic as well. Couldn't they help?"

None of this pettiness meant anything anyway and he was too tired for it. Too tired even to taste the bitterness of surrender, as he gave in and answered, "Once everything's entered, I can run a pull from various sources to get lists of the property they own locally, registered automobiles, anything that might be traced. But it'll be useless to cross-reference the information if there's any names entered incorrectly or aliases or notes missed."

"So it has to be perfect," said the pharaoh, nodding. "No mistakes. But that doesn't mean you have to do everything all yourself." His gaze was sharper than ever, not with anger, but a penetrating intensity that was far worse. Far more difficult to comprehend. "Relying on the help of others isn't failing Mokuba, Kaiba."

No. He hadn't failed his brother. Not yet. Not until he knew for certain it was too late, with or without their help--but none of that would come, when he opened his mouth; he had no words left to match Yugi's calm assurance.

He had never once defeated Yugi in a fair duel. No cards now, but he still was losing, defenses stripped away, broken down, ignored, and he was too exhausted to be devising new strategies this late in their game.

But at least there were no cards here now. Kaiba pushed back his laptop, stood. "I'm getting coffee," he said, by way of explanation. Not running away. The caffeine was overdue anyway, by the pounding of his head. Thankfully at the moment there was no Black Magician Girl around to stop him. And Yugi made no attempt to, just watched him leave the office, saying nothing at all.

* * *

_to be continued..._

_Concerning Ghouls: in the Japanese version, the Rare Hunters seen in Battle City were also called Ghouls. The manga goes into greater detail, stating that "Ghoul" was the general name for Malik's Duel Monsters criminal operation, with Rare Hunters being the duelists of the Ghouls. I'm not sure what they were called in the dub; I apologize for any confusion._

_Also, for the record (and Gnine's benefit), while Malik does not visually appear in this story, he was totally wearing the lavender belly shirt while on the phone here._

_Thank you so much for the reviews, I hope I (and Kaiba-kun) continue to entertain! _


	7. there will be a way

In the hallway outside the office Kaiba paused in his strides, released a long breath in the silent emptiness of the corridor. There was solace in the moment alone; he had been too long in the company of too many others. Even if half or more of them were only figments of his imagination. But the privacy didn't relax him; he couldn't afford to let it, needed the tension to stay off the dangerous allure of sleepiness.

His breathing sounded harsh to his own ears anyway, not calming. Every breath was more seconds wasted, and his focus was drifting too much as it were. No, it wouldn't be the help of others which would fail his brother; it would be his own weakness.

A jabber of voices sounded from the break room as he approached. Not hallucinated cards, just Yugi's two friends, talking as loudly as if they thought themselves alone in the building.

"--hate this," Honda was saying. "Mokuba's out there and those bastards might be hurting him. He's just a kid, he doesn't deserve any of this. And there's nothing we can do, we're hardly helping one bit. And then, Kaiba..."

"Yeah," Jounouchi answered. "Seeing him like this..."

Kaiba, listening outside the break room door, could hear the edge in his voice, speaking that agreement. Knew what it had to be, a suppressed hint of cruel satisfaction, that as much as Jounouchi might like Mokuba, as honestly upset as he was, at the same time he couldn't help but take a victor's pleasure in seeing the weakness of a man he hated.

"Yugi's dealing with it, but still."

"Yeah," Jounouchi said again.

There was a brief pause; Kaiba heard their sneakers scuffing the floor, and then Honda said, "You're really hating this, too."

"I can't stand it!" and such was the unexpected, honest rage in Jounouchi's growl that Kaiba was almost driven back a step. "Like you said, this shouldn't have ever happened to Mokuba, yeah--and Kaiba, too. Maybe I don't like the guy, but he doesn't deserve this, either. What he's going through here--no one does."

"I know. We've been up against Kaiba how many times?" Honda asked. "For more than two years, and I've never seen him like this. This close to--to losing it. Tell me I wasn't the only one freaked when he flipped out there."

"Damn it, we gotta find him soon, Honda. Mokuba. We have to. And he better be okay, he's gotta be." There was the sound of an impact, Jounouchi punching his fist into his hand, or perhaps into the counter. "Kaiba--the look in his eyes, it's like Duelist Kingdom. Like on that castle tower, when he was threatening to take a header off if Yugi won--the son of a bitch really would've done it, too. And that's the look in his eyes now."

Kaiba remembered that moment on the tower, and immediately afterwards, the hatred in their eyes. He had revealed Yugi's weakness then, shown him inadequate to protect what he loved. Willing to die, perhaps, but not willing to kill; Yugi had wept at his helplessness, and his friends had detested Kaiba for it, for proving that point. Except in the end Yugi had been the stronger after all, winning against Pegasus when Kaiba himself had been defeated. He had failed Mokuba in the end for all his determination, and Yugi had succeeded; he deserved their contempt after all, when even cheating he hadn't won the crucial victory.

He deserved it, and yet however hard he listened now, he could not hear that old accustomed hatred in their voices. None of the expected scorn. What he did hear he couldn't identify: sorrow, or anger, or something else; by some strange aural trick that hushed tone might even be mistaken for respect.

"You really think if we lose Mokuba, that Kaiba might..." Honda muttered. Odd how depressed he sounded, as if he regretted that prospect no less than Mokuba's possible fate.

But Jounouchi said, "No," like he was certain, like for some reason he thought he could be confident of Kaiba's intent. "No, he wouldn't just kill himself, because Mokuba wouldn't want him to, and Kaiba's gotta know that. But we'll lose Kaiba anyway. Maybe he'll become that bastard he was at Death-T again. And I don't want to see that. Kaiba now, he's an asshole, but he's got his good points. Sometimes I think Yugi's getting through to him, if he'd just admit it. Maybe in a few years he might even let us call him a friend..."

_Let us_. Like he had any say in it; like they didn't have the free will to say whatever they wanted. Besides, hadn't Mokuba asked this enough of him already? Asked him to give them a chance, because they were Mokuba's friends, somehow--that was why they were all here, wasn't it, out of concern for their friend. His brother, who let them call him a friend.

His brother, who might never see any of them again, if he wasn't in time, and yet he was just standing here, uselessly, listening outside the door in some damned dazed fugue. Hesitating, like he was _afraid_ to go inside. Like it mattered at all what these idiots were saying. Weren't they here only at his sufferance? In his building, blathering in his break room, drinking his coffee.

He should kick them all out. He should have never let them stick around; he never should have let Yugi inside to begin with, but he might need them--Mokuba might need them, and that was all that counted.

Kaiba opened the break room door, and the chatter inside cut off like some cosmic mute button had been pressed. Jounouchi and Honda both stared at him, a fine impression of rabbits caught in headlights. "Kaiba...?"

Kaiba glared back, stalking to the coffeemaker. Honda hastily shoved Jounouchi out of his way, hissed, "Don't get between a CEO and his coffee!" when Jounouchi looked like he might protest. They let him pour a cup in silence; he lifted it to his lips and drained half of it in a single gulp. The scalding of his tongue was painful enough to dispel the floating vagueness of fatigue, and the caffeine would keep it at bay.

"You've got some good coffee here," Honda said, a tentative foray into restarting the broken conversation, as Kaiba lowered the cup. "It, uh, must be pretty expensive, huh?"

"Of course it is," Jounouchi said, not giving Kaiba the chance to snub his friend. "Everything here's gotta be. Bet a bag of those beans costs as much as I spend on meals in a week."

"Unlikely," Kaiba muttered. "Not the way you eat."

"Yeah, well, as much as Yugi spends," Jounouchi corrected, undeterred. "And the rest of the stuff in here--Kaiba, you got your own latte machine. Why? Do you ever drink anything but straight black? And look at this jar! Chocolate sprinkles! What kind of hardass super-executive has chocolate sprinkles?"

"Mokuba likes them on lattes."

"You let Mokuba drink coffee?" Honda asked, then shut his mouth like that had slipped out by accident and he wanted to ensure no more idiocy did.

"He drinks coffee occasionally," Kaiba said, finding himself answering before he could wonder why he bothered. "Not often, he knows it's not healthy. But when it's necessary."

"Oh..."

"And the whipped cream?" Jounouchi butted in. "That also his? All six cans of it? Flavored whipped cream! Chocolate, strawberry, banana--where do you even get banana whipped cream? And the chocolate sauce...wouldn't have thought it was you, Kaiba. A set-up like this, you got the right girls in here, you could really...party..."

"Man, stop that!" Honda protested.

"Stop what?"

"You're thinking about having Mai in here! That's disgusting!"

Jounouchi's face turned as bright red as if he had downed a shot of vodka. "I--I--what's so disgusting about that?"

"Because Mai's not here, only me and Kaiba are! And I don't wanna get mixed up in one of your wet dreams, and if you _do_ want Kaiba here for that, then I _really_ don't want to know!"

"Ew, man, you just ruined a perfectly good--"

They were shrieking at each other, weren't even glancing at him, and yet Kaiba was suddenly struck with the realization that this whole farce was for his benefit. A private comedy performance intended to distract him, relax him, as much as Yugi's attempts at light conversation. Like he could be manipulated that easily.

Growling wordlessly, Kaiba slammed a lid on his coffee, turned on his heel and strode out of the break room, leaving the pair of them behind.

He heard the noise in his office from halfway down the hall, briefly entertained the notion that Yugi was on the phone with someone, or had turned on the radio. That hope was dashed when he clearly heard Yugi answer himself, an octave deeper and rougher in tone. And there were other voices as well, too many others to just be Yugi and the television.

Kaiba closed his eyes, stood stock-still in the corridor and told himself that he was hearing nothing but Yugi's lone reedy murmur through the office door. That he could not possibly be hearing those low baritones, or those feminine trills, or especially that high-pitched infernal squeaking fuzzball. He was Kaiba Seto and he was stressed and tired and pissed off, but he was not insane, and when he opened the door he was going to see no one in his office but Yugi. And only one of him.

"Kaiba, you okay?" Jounouchi and Honda had followed him out of the break room, were behind him now. It was too much to wish that they keep their distance, but at least they could have the wits to keep that open emotion from their voices. Caring is vulnerability, to show concern is to show weakness, hadn't they ever learned that? He wasn't their comrade, wasn't their ally, had been their enemy before. He certainly wasn't and never had been their friend. If he was going mad now, then what was wrong with all of them to begin with, that this most basic understanding eluded them?

"Kaiba, man, you've got to take it easy--you could lie down for an hour, whatever you're doing with the computer, we'll handle it, you just--"

"No," Kaiba said, "You can't; I have to." When he opened his eyes he discovered the cup of coffee was no longer in his hands. He glanced at the floor, expecting to see it spilled there, only to notice Jounouchi had caught it instead, was holding it awkwardly balanced on top of his own cup and was--_looking_ at Kaiba, a repulsive _look_ that seemed not at all surprised that Kaiba was hesitating, even knowing how urgent it was. Reassuring, understanding. As if that weakness was only to be expected, was acceptable.

He reclaimed his coffee, flung open his office door with more force than necessary and was perversely pleased that the voices inside instantly went quiet. Staring eyes watching him from every which way, Yugi's wide-eyed violet--two sets of it, one scarlet-tinged--and a dozen other pairs of all shapes and shades.

"Kaiba-kun," Black Magician Girl said, stepping up before him, like a spokesman, or a sacrifice. "We promise, we'll be quiet so we won't disturb you. But when you need our help, we'll be here." As if hallucinations could help. Her eyes reflected that same feeling he had seen in Jounouchi's brown gaze.

But in the window there were shining cobalt orbs, gleaming through the night--three pairs, the third Blue Eyes had managed to find itself a perch on the ledge beside its brethren. There was none of that nauseating sympathetic _understanding_ in their brilliant blue, just a terrible focused fury, restrained only until it had a target. Until he found the target. Waiting for him, like his brother was waiting for him.

As Kaiba took a seat before his computer again, Yugi was explaining the situation to his friends. "But even if we can't read Arabic, there's gotta be some way we can help," Honda protested. "What are we supposed to do, just sit here?"

"You could sit elsewhere," Kaiba suggested, without raising his eyes from the screen. "Outside this office, preferably. Or better yet the building."

"Well, maybe we can't type the stuff up," Jounouchi said, ignoring him, "but Malik sent over some addresses, right?" He rifled through the pile of papers, withdrew a couple of the listings. "While Kaiba's looking up the others, we'll check out these places."

"No, you will not," Kaiba told him, reaching to take back the pages.

Jounouchi childishly yanked them out of reach. "Oh yeah, I think we will. Maybe this is your building, but you ain't my boss. We're going. Come on, guys." He started to stand. "We should call the cops, too--"

"You're not going anywhere, and you will not call the police. Try, and I'll stop you," Kaiba snarled. Before Jounouchi could take a step, Kaiba had grabbed his wrist, twisted back until the bonkotsu was forced to his knees.

"Ow, shit, ow, leggo, you asshole!" Jounouchi dropped the pages, wrenched his arm free. "Shit, Kaiba, what the hell?"

Yugi and Honda had both started forward, Honda's expression all righteous rage, eager to defend his friend; Yugi's face harder to read. Behind him, Kaiba could see the Flame Swordsman drawing his trademark fiery blade, with Wyvern Warrior hissing protectively beside him and the Red Eyes rumbling outside the window. He was making no friends here.

But none of them were attacking, instead were only glaring. Giving him a chance to explain himself. As if he owed them any explanation.

"What the hell is your problem, Kaiba?" Jounouchi demanded, getting back to his feet, fists clenched. Kaiba was braced for an assault but Jounouchi wasn't swinging, not yet. Unusual restraint from a teen hoodlum. "I don't believe you're still pulling this crap now--do you really think Mokuba has time for your ego? Get over yourself, you need our help. _Mokuba_ needs our help. Hell, you wouldn't have gotten this far if me and Honda hadn't found that guy. If you seriously want to save your brother, then you have to let the stupid pride go."

Strange how his speech started so charged with anger, but his tone fell as he spoke, until he ended almost quietly. A plea, instead of challenge.

"Pride?" Kaiba said, and it was just as strange, how the words coming out of his mouth didn't even sound like his own, like he couldn't recognize his own voice anymore. "This has nothing to do with pride. I don't care what you want to do or if you imagine you can help. But I will not let you jeopardize this chance." Last chance, perhaps. If it wasn't already too late.

Jounouchi blinked. "Jeopardize your chance? What are you talking about?"

He truly didn't understand, and it should have irritated him more, to confront such stupidity, but Kaiba felt his anger dying, even that last strength leeched away by fatigue. "There's no guarantee that it's any of these men who have Mokuba. But if the Ghouls are organized and in communication with one another, and if law enforcement or other strangers start visiting any Ghoul-owned properties--"

"They'll realize we're onto them," Yugi supplied. "And then they might move Mokuba-kun somewhere else, harder to find."

"Or else decide it's not worth the risk to keep him any longer," Kaiba said.

The implications of that, at least, the bonkotsu followed. He blanched. "Damn, Kaiba, I'm sorry. I didn't think..."

"Oh, are you capable of doing so?"

Jounouchi's bowed head jerked up fast, but Yugi spoke faster. "So it'd be better to wait until we have all the possible addresses before we go to any of them, that way we can figure out the best bets to check out first. Or maybe we can figure out how to investigate the places so the Ghouls won't be alerted, there's got to be a way..."

"There is a way," but that wasn't either Yugi's voice or his friends'. A low, quiet baritone, which Yugi didn't respond to, even as Black Magician stepped forward, the other cards deferentially moving out of his way. If the hallucination bore a grudge for Kaiba's attempt to knock his nonexistent head off his nonexistent shoulders, it didn't show in his expression, calm but forceful. "They won't see us, wherever we explore."

"But, Master," and Black Magician Girl hovered his side, peering up at the senior card anxiously, "if _we_ find Mokuba-kun, what can we do? Even if Kaiba-kun," and she glanced at him, "hears us and listens, the laws--"

"What will any law matter to him?" and Black Magician nodded toward Kaiba. "There will be a way," he said. "They'll see to it," and the three Blue Eyes roared agreement, thunder to shatter the windows. Kaiba couldn't help but react.

"Kaiba," Yugi said, "what was that?" He was looking at Kaiba, keenly intent, even while oblivious to Black Magician looming over him. "What are you hearing?"

"Nothing," Kaiba said, "nothing that will do any good." Just figments, neurological misfirings of an over exhausted brain. A coping mechanism, illusions manufactured to manage unbearable despair, and he cursed his traitorous subconscious, that he was so weak as to need hallucinations to shield himself from painful reality.

Logically, it was likely too late already. Better than a sixty percent chance and rising with every minute, that the Ghouls had either gotten what they wanted--but his brother would never give in--or else decided this venture was too risky and disposed of the problem. And not even a ten percent chance that he would be able to deduce the correct location even with access to all possible data.

Kaiba had never been a gambler. Pathetic, to wish for luck instead of relying on the surety of your own strength; and he had never had anything he cared for so little that he would risk it on pure chance. But he had always found comfort in numbers, the constancy of statistics, not to play the odds, but to depend on their certainty.

There was no comfort in these odds. There was just the increasing certainty of his failure, and his brother's voice, faint and far away as the cards were vivid, whispering in his mind, _"Please, Nii-sama, I'm waiting..."_

For all the duels Yugi had won against him, for all the times he thought he had tasted defeat, Kaiba knew now that he had never really lost before. Not like he was losing now. Eighteen years of victories meant nothing, greatest (second-greatest) in the world was a worthless title. He was a brother, first of anything; failing that, he was nothing at all.

"What's there, Kaiba?" Yugi asked again. The other Yugi, the phantom pharaoh, standing beside his identical counterpart, watching him. They both were watching him, with the same intense concentration, as if they were trying to will themselves to witness his hallucinations.

They both could tell that something was wrong. As if anything now was right.

"I know you can see me, Kaiba," the other Yugi said. "I don't understand how, but if you can see me, when I'm really here, then maybe whatever else you're sensing now is true, too. If it's something that can help somehow..."

"No," Kaiba said, knowing what Yugi and his friends thought of him, how close to the edge they already suspected he was. If they realized--if they tried to stop him from doing anything that he had to do... "There's nothing." He sat down before the computer again, let his eyes pass over those figures that shouldn't, couldn't, really be here. No matter what Yugi might insist. Besides, what good could a vision possibly do?

If Mokuba were here, Kaiba could tell him what he was seeing. Mokuba would be able to tell him if anything might really there, or if he actually had gone mad. He could trust his brother to answer honestly, and be safe in telling him, knowing Mokuba would never use it against him. Mokuba would believe in him even knowing he was insane.

Wherever he was, wherever the Ghouls had taken his brother, Kaiba knew that Mokuba would be believing in him even now. Waiting for him. If it wasn't too late.

"You can at least give us the names and stuff as you enter them, right?" Honda asked, his tentative uncertainty an odd contrast to the unreal reality of the hallucinations. "You've got other computers with access to the databases, right, so we can start looking things up as you go."

"Yes, that will help, won't it, Kaiba-kun," Yugi said, "the faster we get the information together, the sooner we can decide what to do next."

"And we will investigate every avenue as it opens," Black Magician stated, with such sublime confidence that Kaiba almost nodded. Almost accepted the momentary relief, a split-second conviction that this would work out, because it had to, because none of them would allow it to be otherwise. But there could be no guarantees, and he was only imagining that confidence.

His hand pushed into his pocket, fingers curling around the cool flat metal of his brother's locket. He had as little use for hope as he had for luck. Pointless to wish for what you had no control over. Weak.

But there was still a possibility, even with the odds against it. And he couldn't help but cling to that rapidly decreasing chance, couldn't help but believe in it against all logic. Believe that he would find his brother in time, because he could not imagine a future where he did not. Perhaps that was weakness. Perhaps that was madness.

Kaiba didn't care anymore. He had a task to do, the only thing he could think of. It would have to be enough. There was nothing else. No other way.

But he left the papers spread out, so the addresses written on them could be read, even if he refused to glance at the hallucinations which gathered around to study them. Refused to listen to their murmuring, sharing that information, one after another monster volunteering and departing in eager haste, channeling the frustrated urgency of their deck owners.

Jounouchi was pacing, Honda was fidgeting, Yugi was exchanging some silent communication with his other self. Kaiba ignored them all. His attention was focused on his laptop, on the task at hand that was all anyone could do now. Even though it might be too late, by the numbers. Already failed, already lost, and he would never see his brother again, and there could be no madness great enough to shield him from the pain of that.

Though when he heard the beating of great wings outside, nonexistent or not, he couldn't help the hope that flared in his heart with his dragons taking flight.

* * *

_to be continued..._

_Of course the cards wouldn't stay away too long - I enjoy 'em too much! Contrary to Kaiba's feelings on the matter. Mokuba's up next, but for now, all my gratitude for the reviews, and happy holidays, one and all!_


	8. to be seeing things like this

"Mokuba!"

Mokuba opened his eyes, and his brother was there. Standing over him in the little room where he was imprisoned, staring down at him with his arms crossed, tall and proud, his white coat almost glowing under the glare of the bare light bulb overhead.

"Nii-sama!" Mokuba cried. "You came!" His voice was hoarse, mouth dry, but he felt tears of relief prickling in his eyes. He forced them back, swallowed hard. "I, I knew you would come, but..." He pushed to his feet, back against the wall to help balance with his bound ankles.

His brother made no move to assist, watching with his arms still crossed. "Mokuba," he said, "what did you tell them?"

"Of course I didn't tell them anything, Nii-sama," Mokuba said. "I wouldn't!" His brother's face was strange, watching him. Maybe it was just the harshness of the light, that made his eyes so hard. "They wanted me to sabotage Kaiba Corporation," Mokuba told his brother, "I'd never do that."

Still his brother said nothing. "Come on, Nii-sama," Mokuba said, "you know I wouldn't..."

Finally his brother nodded. "That's all I needed to know," he said, and turned away, his coat flaring around him in a wave of white.

"Nii-sama!" Mokuba tried to follow, but tripped instead over his tied feet, fell to the cement floor. "Wait a second, please." He worked at the binds around his ankles, but they were as tight as before. "I'm sorry, Nii-sama," he said, struggling to get up anyway, "just let me--"

"I don't have time for this," his brother said, looking back over his shoulder. "You're slowing me down."

"Sorry, I've almost got it, really." Mokuba bent down, tugged hard at the knots again. The cord dug into his flesh through his jeans cuffs, but didn't loosen.

"You've already taken long enough," said his brother, and his voice was as cold and hard as his eyes.

"Nii-sama, please--"

"Stop whining. It's annoying." His brother stared down at him, his expression still that same strange, flat look. "I had to waste all this time finding you. And even now, you're still helpless. Useless."

Mokuba flinched, even with the paralyzing chill running through his veins, freezing him, like ice in his blood. "I'm sorry...I..."

"Stupid of me," his brother said, "to come all this way just for you. I shouldn't have bothered." Again he turned away, but not before Mokuba finally recognized the look in his eyes. It had been so long since he had seen that empty mask on his brother's face; he had thought he would never see it again. Not after Death-T and all that followed.

"Nii-sama!" Mokuba cried, and reached to grab the trailing tail of his brother's coat.

His brother's backhand caught him hard across the cheek, knocked him to the floor. "Don't pull at me. I don't need your deadweight slowing me down." Ice blue eyes studied him with remote, unsympathetic indifference. "These past few days I've realized how much faster I can walk when you're not dogging my heels. I only looked for you because I knew you'd give in to the Ghouls sooner or later, so I had to find you before you sold out KaibaCorp."

"But I didn't," Mokuba tried to protest, fighting to speak though his throat felt like it was closing up, suffocating him, "I wouldn't do that, I swear, I'd never--"

"I'm to put my trust in someone like you?" his brother snorted. "A loser too weak even to save himself from a few pathetic petty crooks?"

"But, Nii-sama--"

"Stop calling me that," his brother said. "Stop saying it like it's worth anything. 'Big brother'--it doesn't mean anything to me. I've told you before, only a loser would believe in brotherly love."

"Nii-sama," and Mokuba couldn't tell if he screamed or whispered it, but he didn't know what else to say. He had never thought he would be told that again; his brother wasn't like that anymore. Not since his brother had come back to him, had pieced back together his heart to wake from the darkness. The person at Death-T who had screamed that there was no such thing as brotherly love hadn't really been his brother. Just a broken shadow of him.

But his brother had always done so much for him, and maybe this had been too much. How wearisome must it be to have to take care of a little brother like him, to always be having to do for him what he was too weak to do for himself. "Nii-sama, I'm sorry..."

"I'm not your brother." The unfeeling contempt in his brother's face was far worse than his anger would have been, as his hand came up again. His back to the wall, Mokuba didn't flinch from it, just shut his eyes.

"Open your eyes," his brother commanded, his voice weird. "Open your eyes, and drink this."

Another blow stung his cheek, and then rough fingers clamped around his chin, tilted up his head. Liquid was poured into his dry mouth, dribbles of cold water sliding down his throat, choking him even as he convulsively swallowed. "Wake up, kid." It didn't sound like his brother at all anymore, not even his brother as he had been before, and Mokuba tried to twist away.

But then he heard the roar, recognized it instantly. The dragon's scream was unmistakable.

Mokuba jerked up, opening his eyes. The first thing he saw was, not his brother, but the scraggly, pasty face of the skinny Ghoul, holding a plastic water bottle to his lips. As he coughed the man pulled the bottle away, screwed the cap back on. "Easy, now. Feeling better?" he asked.

Dream. It had all been just a dream. Though he hardly felt more awake now, with his vision hazy at the edges and his head spinning, from the man's blows, and the dehydration, probably.

The second thing Mokuba saw, when he raised his head again, was a shining blue eye, fixed on him over the Ghoul's shoulder.

He gasped, reflexively shied back, staring. The Ghoul frowned at him. "What're you looking at?" and he glanced back over his shoulder.

The dragon behind him unfurled white wings, snarling. It was smaller than usual, though barely able to fit in the room, its wings not halfway spread still spanning from wall to wall.

It had to be a Solid Vision hologram. But the Ghoul didn't twitch, even when a wicked horned jaw scraped past his neck. Not merely ignoring it; like he didn't see the monster at all.

Besides, even if his associates were dueling outside the room for some reason, they couldn't possibly have a...

Hallucinations were one symptom of advanced dehydration, weren't they? Mokuba licked his cracked lips, asked, "Can I have more water?"

"Of course," the Ghoul said, and then smiled, patient and cruel. "You know what we want. Tell me a code, and I'll give you all you want," and he held up the plastic bottle, the water sloshing temptingly inside. "I'm sorry we had to do this, but you should understand now how serious we are."

"I understand," Mokuba said. His mouth was dry from more than thirst. The Blue Eyes was gazing at him, horned head cocked, listening. "But I..." He blinked his eyes hard, but the dragon remained. He had to be imagining it, and yet it looked totally real. More concrete than anything else in the room, its scales shimmering in the artificial light.

He wondered how badly off he must be, to be seeing things like this. But he couldn't submit to the Ghouls, not with what was at stake. When his brother came, Mokuba had to be able to tell him honestly that he hadn't given in.

Survival was the priority. But how weak was he, if he couldn't survive this? His brother had endured worse. And the dragon was watching. Would see, would know, if he betrayed his brother, the dragon's master.

_I wouldn't_, he wanted to tell it, desperately. _Never._

"There's nothing there, stop staring like that!" the Ghoul yelled at him. "Don't play games with me, boy!" He slapped him again.

The dragon growled and advanced, pacing around the oblivious Ghoul to come between the man and Mokuba, wings raised to shield. White scales brushed his arm, his face, and Mokuba forgot the pain of his cheek--he _felt_ that touch, feather-light but warm. Nothing like the vague undefined static of a Solid Vision projection. The sapphire eyes set in that fierce domed skull stared into his, and Mokuba knew this was no hologram. Even his brother's genius programming couldn't display that level of detail, the depths in that piercing draconic gaze.

And just like that, he wasn't afraid anymore. If he were losing his mind and only imagining this--it was better than the lonely hours in this room before, infinitely better than the nightmare. And if it wasn't just a hallucination, somehow--there was no threat to him in that shining blue, the exact same shade as his brother's.

The Ghoul was talking, but he hardly could pay attention, even when the man took him by the shoulders and shook him. "You want water? Give me just one code."

The Blue Eyes rumbled, a growl gentle enough to be a purr. The dragon understood, Mokuba realized; the dragon knew he never would give in. Understanding in that low vibration, and more. There was regret in the careful way it nudged his cheek again, leathery scales warm against his skin. Apology. Almost as if he could hear words in the monter's bass rumble, telling him, _Sorry, we're sorry, to not be here sooner. But hold fast, wait just a little longer, and _he'll _come for you,_ and there could be no question who _he_ was.

Of course his brother was searching for him; he had never doubted that. But looking into the shining brilliance of those blue eyes, Mokuba somehow knew that this dragon, hallucination or not, was absolutely his brother's, that his brother had sent the dragon to him, to find him.

A monster as powerful as the Blue Eyes required a tribute to play. He wondered what his brother had sacrificed to summon the dragon.

He couldn't be weak now, not when his brother was so strong. He couldn't give up. If his brother was doing so much for him, then he had to be worthy of that effort, that strength. There had to be a way he could win here. Even if he were hurt enough that he was going crazy and seeing things.

"Are you going to cooperate, kid?" demanded the Ghoul.

Mokuba opened his mouth to deny it yet again, as the Blue Eyes hissed at the man, a threatening harsh sound like a giant snake's. If only the dragon were real and not just in his head, then it could attack the man and they could escape. He could climb onto its back, fly from this little room to his brother. Or it could roar so loudly that the cement walls would shake and crumble, and his brother would hear it, wherever he was--

And suddenly Mokuba knew what he had to do. The dragon might be only in his head, but there was yet a way to make it roar. Loud enough for his brother to hear.

He closed his mouth. Putting his hand to the wall behind him, he pushed up to his feet. Standing made him dizzier, but when he swayed the Blue Eyes coiled around him, scaled flanks supporting him. Maybe he was just imagining it, but it helped all the same, and he stroked the ridged neck in thanks.

Then he looked up to the Ghoul. Swallowed, scraping his dry throat, and let his nervousness show in his face, so the man could tell how hard his heart was pounding. "I'll cooperate," he said. "D-don't leave me alone here anymore."

"Glad to hear it, Kaiba-san," the man said, smiling an ugly smile. He put his hand on Mokuba's shoulder in a mockery of gentleness. The Blue Eyes hissed again, as he passed over the water bottle.

Mokuba's hands were shaking as he unscrewed the cap; he had to force himself not to gulp the water so fast he choked, drinking it all in one swallow, sputtering and coughing when it ran out. He hadn't known plain water could taste so good, sweeter than syrup. He felt better for it immediately, not so light-headed, as if he were more solid with the weight of water in his belly.

The Blue Eyes was still there when he lowered the bottle, long neck arched over him watchfully.

He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, told the man, "Thank you."

"As soon as you've helped us with what we need, we'll find something for you to eat, too."

The fake kindness in the Ghoul's smile made Mokuba sick to his stomach, but he smiled back, tremulous and scared, like a kid should be. Careful to keep any hint of victory from showing in his eyes. "There's a problem," he said. The unavoidable waver in his voice was a convenient touch. "I was telling the truth before, I don't know a lot of the codes for the cards. I did know them, but my brother, he doesn't trust anybody, he changes them all the time. But making your fake cards work--I think I could do that. Some of them, maybe. I can try--I'll try my best for you, I promise. Just-just don't leave me alone."

"You know how to make the duel disk system accept our copy cards?" the Ghoul demanded.

"Maybe," Mokuba said. "Maybe some of the cards. I'm not sure I can do it--but there's a few cards I know the parameters for well enough, I bet I could make them work. If you have the right fake cards, the ones I know. Do you--" he swallowed, "--do you have copies of any rare dragons? Like Red Eyes Black Dragon?"

He held his breath, staring into the dragon's azure orbs, not daring to look at the man. He couldn't ask about Blue Eyes, they wouldn't make fakes of a card that obvious, but the stats of Red Eyes should be close enough for his purposes.

Really, he should have thought of this days ago. Saved his brother so much trouble. It was obvious--though if it were too obvious, if the Ghoul was smart enough to realize what he planned...

"Yes, we have some of those," the Ghoul said, grinning. He opened the door and gestured for Mokuba to hobble through it, the white dragon prowling imperceptibly beside him. "Come with me, Kaiba-san. Let's see what you can do."

* * *

_to be continued..._

_And I'm back! And the story's back! And Mokuba, and the Blue Eyes, too. Please forgive any undraconic displays of squishiness in this chapter, but it's been a long few days for all of them. And I can't very well say I'm writing hurt/comfort if poor Mokuba isn't getting comfort from _someone_. Or something. (One guess what X-parrot's favorite duel monster is. Hey, I've loved dragons since my junior-high Pern-reading days...)_


	9. who it had to be

The one thing worse than seeing monsters that weren't really there, Kaiba Seto had realized, was not seeing them anymore. In the last hour he had caught hardly a glimpse of a nonexistent being, nothing more than the glitter of armor or the flutter of wings out of the corner of his eye, gone by the time he raised his head. Just his imagination, nothing as extreme as full hallucinations.

He didn't feel any more sane for it. Even as his fingers hammered the laptop's keyboard, he felt detached, displaced. As if even while he worked in his office, he was at the same time outside the window, on the ledge and slipping, a two hundred fifty meter drop yawning before him. The fall which had killed Gozaburo, and no dragons perched on the ledge now to catch him--

"Kaiba-kun?"

Yugi's voice dispersed the vision, but not the vertigo when Kaiba opened his eyes (when had they closed?), the couch tilting and swooping under him even though he knew it was perfectly level. White text on black burned in afterimage on his retinas, obscuring Yugi's anxious expression. He blinked to force the spots away, snarled, "What time is it?"

"A little after two. It's okay, Kaiba-kun," Yugi hasted to reassure, "you hadn't actually dozed off yet, you were staring at the page and just blinked. Only a couple seconds."

His erstwhile rival sidled closer. "Here, Kaiba-kun," and he replaced the paper in Kaiba's hand--he was done with it anyway--with a candy bar, pushing it at him insistently. "You should eat something, it's been hours."

Kaiba was more nauseous than hungry, like his gut was still plummeting off that illusionary ledge. But that would be impossible to explain. He stripped the wrapper off the bar instead, bit off half and chewed mechanically, not tasting the chocolate. As he swallowed he stared past Yugi to his desk, where Jounouchi and Honda were hunched over the computer, muttering to one another.

No one behind them, though, neither magician nor elf nor dragon. If the cards were checking the new addresses to investigate, they were leaving the instant they had a destination. Or else they had stopped searching, because they had already found his brother--or had found it was too late--

And he was well on his way to a complete psychotic break, to be considering any of this. Kaiba forced down the rest of the candy bar, deliberately turned away, back to his laptop. "How many addresses have you found?" he asked Yugi.

"Nineteen in the Domino area so far, with the names and aliases you've given us," Yugi said.

"Twenty, now!" Jounouchi called over the correction.

Kaiba nodded, "Good work," slipping out before he could stop himself. Like he was approving of an employee's competency, but none of them here were on his payroll. And yet he was unthinkingly relying on them all the same.

Kaiba paid his employees better than his competitors, better than Gozaburo had, and competition for all levels of Kaiba Corporation positions was fierce. The one aspect of human nature that could always be relied on was self-interest; he could have faith that his employees would work to the best of their ability, because they were motivated to keep their jobs.

But these three working with him now were here for their own reasons. Here out of nothing more than friendship, nothing as substantial as ties of blood, just an ephemeral ideal.

An ideal that had been tested, hard and long; he had witnessed those trials, had instigated some himself, and it hadn't broken. But a hypothesis can never be proved, only disproved, and it was as great a madness to put his trust in an ideal as in hallucinated monsters--but he was glancing at his desk again, without meaning to, knowing hope was pointless and hoping anyway. If just one of the duel monsters would come back, long enough to tell him something, anything...

Meanwhile, he had no choice but to accept the help of Yugi and the others, to rely on their commitment to the principles they so often professed. Rely on their friendship with his brother, their greatest strength, which had never failed them before, even when tested against his own power. They liked Mokuba; they cared about what happened to him, and it was only logical to accept that bias, to use it, like he would any other asset.

Though even their friendship with Mokuba didn't explain the concerns he had overheard Jounouchi expressing, or the look Yugi was giving him now. Nor the bizarre impulse in him to answer that look, to tell them what he had seen, what impossible hope there might be, soaring over the city on silvery white wings.

He wondered if a schizophrenic would be conscious of his psychosis, whether he would know if his inevitable breakdown had already occurred.

He wondered if that mattered to him at all anymore.

At least he was reasonably sure Yugi and the others were real. That should probably count toward their favor. But it didn't give them the right to look at him with such inclusive familiarity. Like a peer, like he was the same level as them. Just another member of their silly little circle.

Like they cared--

The alarm sounding from his computers' speakers caught them all off-guard. Yugi jumped to his feet like he had been hit with an electric shock, and Jounouchi rocked back so hard he almost bowled his chair over. "What the hell's that?"

Kaiba wasted no time answering the bonkotsu, hurriedly calling up the duel disk uplink on his laptop, typing so quickly he nearly mis-entered his password.

The worldwide network of satellites and computers that comprised the Kaiba Corporation duel disk system was one of the most secure on the planet. Based as it was on military technology, the network's core operations were designed to be impenetrable, and after Battle City Kaiba had personally rebuilt the security protocols, with Mokuba's able assistance.

Two KaibaCorp support centers, one in Japan and the other in America, kept a twenty-four-hour watch on the system, checking all unusual activity in the case of a crash or a cyber-attack. They dealt daily with a host of problems, amateur hackers and the thousands of fake cards that players tried to use every day, as well as monitoring legitimate duels, especially during big tournaments. They had several thousand categorized alert codes, and handled most incidents autonomously.

From time to time the center directors would contact their CEO to report potentially serious problems. Additionally, a couple dozen of the highest level emergency codes were set to trigger automatic alerts in Kaiba's own system as well as the centers. Most of those he could trust the centers to resolve, and would merely keep an eye on their resolution; occasionally he would advise their course of action.

Of all the codes indicating unusual activity on the system, there were only two that the system was programmed to bypass the support centers and alert him directly, situations that he wanted to personally handle before they became known to anyone else, even inside his own company.

One of these alerts hadn't been triggered for some time. It signaled that somewhere in the worldwide duel disc system, a God Card had been played.

The other alert had never sounded before, but Kaiba still recognized it instantly. Even before he logged into the system, he knew what it was. Who it was. Who it had to be, and the blood pounding in his ear roared like dragons, something inside his heart so powerful it might tear itself free from his chest.

"Kaiba," the bonkotsu asked--they were all hanging over him, Yugi and his two friends, leaning over the couch almost touching his shoulders, but he was too absorbed to shove them away, "why the hell are the computers flipping out? You find something? What'd that noise mean?"

There were only four of those cards in the world, and only three undamaged, three that could be played in the duel disk system, and all three were in his deck, safe in his pocket. None had initiated this fourth, impossible signal, beamed from disk to satellite and setting off the alarms, sure as a beacon spelling out his name. No fake card could fool the system's protocols; no random hacker could be that lucky. There could be no doubt at all.

Just hope.

"Someone just played a Blue Eyes White Dragon," Kaiba said.

o o o

The dragon was magnificent, rearing up to its full height, white wings spread wide and jaws gaping in its thunderous roar. Its blue eyes flashed, vicious and victorious, and it seemed to Mokuba that the monster was looking at him, though the holograms weren't programmed to detect anyone not wearing an active duel disk.

It was there only for an instant, and then vanished in a burst of disintegrating static, as the Ghoul ripped the fake dragon card from his duel disk's slot and flung it aside. "What the hell was that? That was no Red Eyes!"

"It looked like a Blue Eyes White Dragon," one of the other Ghouls said.

"I know what it looked like!" shrieked his boss. "But it sure as hell wasn't supposed to be--we don't have any damn Blue Eyes cards, what good would it be to make a copy everyone would know is fake?" He deactivated his duel disk, swung around to advance on Mokuba. "You! You did this!"

Mokuba's back was against the computer desk; he couldn't retreat any further, and the other two Ghouls were between him and the door. "I--I'm sorry," he stammered, putting as much fear and confusion into his voice as he could manage, with the dragon's triumphant roar still echoing in his ears. "I must've made a mistake with the codes--"

"I'll say you made a mistake," snarled the Ghoul. "Did you think we'd be too stupid to notice?"

"I'm sorry," Mokuba cried again. His heart was pounding in his chest--if they did notice, if they realized the ramifications of what he had done... "I thought that was the code for Red Eyes Black Dragon for sure--"

"That's what you told us," the Ghoul said. "You claimed you had it programmed correctly, that all we had to do was test it, make sure our card would really play."

"It did play, though," said the same Ghoul who had spoken before, the tallest of the three of them. "The hologram was perfect, the system accepted it as a genuine card. So he got that part right."

"The system accepted it as the wrong card! What good does that do us?" The scraggly Ghoul took hold of Mokuba's collar, dragged him up off the floor to scream in his face, "Like we'd mistake a Blue Eyes for anything else! What'd you think, that we'd wait to test it until after we let you go? I know what you're trying to get away with here. You don't know a damn code except for that dragon--that one's probably never been changed, right, since we've never bothered with fake Blue Eyes cards. You don't know the access codes for any other cards!"

"No!" Mokuba protested, forcing his voice high enough to crack. "No, I know more cards, really I do--just let me try again, please, I'm sorry!"

"Why are you so eager to try? You think it'll buy you some time? Your time is up, kid. No one's coming for you!"

"Please, I can help you! Don't hurt me again!"

He was braced for the backhand, but the Ghoul's blow was hard enough to knock him to the floor. Mokuba lay there for a moment, letting the tears he had been holding back for days freely well up, fill his throat. "Please, don't, I'm sorry, I really tried," he whimpered, knowing it would encourage the man's violence, that show of weakness like blood in the water to human sharks such as these.

The kick to his stomach forced the breath from his lungs in a gasp. "I'll do anything, I'll tell you whatever I know, please," he choked out, curling around his bruised body. Somewhere above him he heard the dragon's outraged howl.

None of them heard it, of course, but one of the other Ghouls stopped their boss before he could land another blow. "If he knows something, we shouldn't get rid of him yet," the man pointed out, while Mokuba lay there, not moving. Faintly, light as a moth's wings, he felt white scales brush his cheek. He didn't open his eyes. The taste of blood tainted his mouth, and still he had to fight not to smile.

Let them have this victory over him; let them think they had won. Let them think about how pathetic a kid he was, about how easily they could hurt him, about how he was helpless and subject utterly to them. Let them think about anything, except the duel disk system, and the uniqueness of the Blue Eyes, and the signal he had sent, bright as shooting off a flare over his location.

All he had to do was wait; let them do anything, just as long as they didn't take him elsewhere. As long as they didn't go anywhere, until the dragon brought his brother here.

* * *

_to be continued..._

_And I'm back! Hopefully with more on the way shortly. Big thanks as always for the reviews - you all make me eager to post, knowing it's being read. Which is good, because I suspect if I left Mokuba in this situation much longer, his Nii-sama would come hunt me down. Personally. ...Yes, I know Kaiba's a fictional character. But do _you _want to be the one to tell him that?_


	10. like it was that simple

It was impossible. Completely, unreasonably, insanely impossible, and they should tell him so. "Someone just played a Blue Eyes White Dragon," Kaiba said. "Not one of mine."

Yugi and the others didn't say anything. Kaiba studied his computer display. The duel disk had already shut down, but that second might have been enough. The network couldn't pinpoint so brief a signal within less than twenty-five meters, but cross-referenced with the other data gathered--one of their twenty addresses appeared within that circumference, attached to a lease signed by a name on Malik's list. Not the same man who had rented the warehouse, but Ghouls, like the jackals they were, skulked in packs. And this was the only possibility. The last hope. "They're on the second floor of an office building on the south side."

Kaiba was prepared for debate. He expected the bonkotsu to stupidly ask who, for Yugi to ask how he knew. He expected them to demand explanation, to check his logic, to protest the tenuous nature of his conclusions. Even with the card's exact stats and codes, even with intimate knowledge of the duel disk system, faking a Blue Eyes should be out of the question. The system should only acknowledge the three registered cards, and Kaiba himself didn't know how he would play a Blue Eyes on it without one. Completely impossible. That reading must have been only a momentary glitch in the system. Completely hopeless, and Yugi and his friends should know enough to tell him so.

Instead, Yugi blinked, just once. "All right," he said. "Shouldn't we get going, then?" and they all started for the elevator down to the garage, without so much as waiting for Kaiba to call down to his driver.

Getting into the car, as he gave the address to his driver, he overheard Honda muttering, "Are we sure about this?" but Kaiba had no opportunity to reply before Jounouchi immediately answered, "Yeah, we are."

Yugi nodded agreement. "Kaiba-kun said it was the Blue Eyes," he said, and nothing more, as if that was enough. More than enough.

Hunched forward in the seat, watching out the window as they pulled onto the streets, Kaiba called the private security team that had been on standby for the past four days, and ordered them to set up a cordon around the block where the Blue Eyes had been played. The place was square in the city's most disreputable neighborhood, unsurprisingly. But the lack of law enforcement could work in his favor.

"Don't approach the office building, but search every car or truck that either comes from that building or stops there when passing through. Tell them we're running a test, preparing for a show, be vague on the details. Whatever you have to say to convince them. Just make sure that no vehicle leaves that block carrying my brother," Kaiba ordered his people. Without police approval such measures were illegal, but of course his security team head didn't mention that. Nor did Yugi or his friends, though they were listening to him issue the instructions. He could see the pale ovals of their faces turned toward him, floating behind his reflection in the car windows.

Not until after he had ended the call and returned the mobile to his pocket did Yugi finally remark, "Shouldn't we call the police now, Kaiba-kun?"

"No," Kaiba said.

"But you told your own guys not to go in--" Honda began.

"Makes sense." Jounouchi nudged Kaiba's shoulder. "If you send in the cops or your goons, someone might screw up, get Mokuba hurt--so we're going in alone, right? Taking out these kidnapping bastards ourselves?" He cracked his knuckles, a shadow of an eager grin on his lips.

Kaiba could have denied it, could have told them that he would handle it himself. That greater numbers might panic his enemies, and risked spoiling any possible element of surprise he might have. But if the Ghouls were expecting him then that wouldn't matter anyway. And he had let the three of them come this far. Little reason to fight them now and waste his last vital energy on pointless argument.

Besides, they were far from alone, whatever the bonkotsu might think. If he looked out the rear windshield he could see the forces arrayed behind them. Scales and swords and suits of armor shining under the streetlights, gliding or sprinting or hovering, an army of monsters filling the deserted 3 AM streets.

Every block they passed, more joined the march, swooping down from the night sky or slipping out of dark alleys. Kaiba could name every monster's stats, but there were many whose origins he couldn't determine. More than the combined forces of his and Yugi's and Jounouchi's decks. The hell if he knew where those others might come from, though he recognized a few of the creepy beasts of Bakura's occult deck, and the pair of stomping barbarians he recalled Honda carrying all the way back in Duelist Kingdom. And that trio of delicately winged beings would be from a feminine deck; if Anzu played, she might favor such tamely conventional beauty.

All that vast host was following them, and at its vanguard, one on either side of the car, soared his Blue Eyes, two dragons flying tandem, the sweep of their great silvery pinions brushing the windows. Kaiba looked, but saw no sign of his third, either ahead or behind.

He wasn't surprised; he knew where the dragon was. Once it had found Mokuba, it wouldn't have left his brother's side. It hadn't needed to; Mokuba had figured out a way for its roar to be heard even several kilometers away.

And now he was going to his brother, finally. But not alone. He hadn't been alone since this whole mess had begun, even before he had started hallucinating. Even without his brother.

That fact would have to be dealt with eventually. And he had never been a coward, to shirk unpleasant duty. Kaiba cleared his throat, turned back from the window. "Yugi," he said, quietly, though not quietly enough that Yugi's head didn't instantly turn towards him. "I owe you," Kaiba told him.

Yugi stared at him with wide soft eyes, and reached out, not casually unthinking like Jounouchi did, but carefully, laying his hand on Kaiba's arm only for a moment. "Kaiba-kun, you don't owe us anything."

But the other Yugi, sitting in the empty space next to him with his arms crossed, spoke over his partner, also looking at Kaiba but with less of that softness. "Yes, you do," the pharaoh said. "All of us, and him the most. We wouldn't be here helping you if it wasn't for him, and you know it. When you get Mokuba back--" _when_, he said, like it was certain, only a matter of a little time, and Kaiba wondered what more he would owe for that mercy--"When Mokuba is safe, you'll be indebted to my partner, and don't believe that you can buy yourself out of it with something as cheap as your company's wealth or another helicopter ride."

"Other me," Yugi whispered, with shocked, berating urgency.

"I know what I'll owe," Kaiba said, steadily, because it was pointless to be enraged by truth, and besides the pharaoh was trying to piss him off; he wouldn't be played that easily. "What I'll owe all of you."

"Really?" Jounouchi inquired. "What? Oh, tell me it's a check with a lot of zeroes."

"Or maybe he could loan you enough rare cards for you to actually win a duel--" Honda muttered, or started to, until Jounouchi's elbow knocked the air out of his lungs and cut off the end of it.

"Like I'd need it--I can beat this jerk fair and square, if he'd listen to me long enough to take a challenge--"

"Jounouchi-kun, Honda-kun..." Yugi said, smiling helplessly at his friends.

But the other Yugi's gaze stayed fixed on Kaiba. "You'll accept his challenge, next time Jounouchi-kun makes one," he said. "You'll do it. Anything he and Honda-kun asks. And Yugi--you owe my partner even more. For Yugi, _you_ will make the challenge. A duel, or a chess match, or a video game--something that doesn't mean anything at all, no contest or tournament, no title at stake. Just the game. And he can decide if he wants to play, or whether he wants to wait and have you ask again."

"Other me," Yugi whispered again, "you can't _make_ someone have fun--"

"Have fun?" Kaiba repeated.

"'Well, a game would be, wouldn't it, Kaiba-kun? I mean, later, after Mokuba-kun's safe--you've been going so hard out, you could use a break..."

"A game," Kaiba said. "That's what you want." All he wanted, out of anything Kaiba could offer. For four days Yugi had been in his office, a constant, diligent annoyance. It had been Yugi who had called Malik, who had helped get the address where they were headed now. Yugi's cards outside, right behind his dragons, Black Magician and all the rest, every bit as irritatingly insistently helpful as their master.

Something in Kaiba's expression made Yugi nervously duck his head; saying, "Forget about it, Kaiba-kun. Let's just get Mokuba-kun back. That's what's important."

As if he would ever forget; as if the only reason any of them were allowed in this car wasn't because he couldn't afford the time to send them away. Kaiba checked his watch, leaned forward to instruct his driver, "Faster. I want to be there in five minutes."

"Yes, sir," the driver said, bowing his head obediently, and hit the accelerator to roar through the next red light, with all the monsters on their tail.

He got them there forty kilometers over the limit and with a minute to spare. Kaiba made a mental note to give the man a bonus for successfully avoiding police attention, as he got out of the car and surveyed the block. The sidewalks were empty and dark, looming buildings casting more shadows than the streetlights and neon signs could dispel. There were no lights outside their destination, the office building's unlit windows blacker squares against the featureless gray concrete.

Save for three windows on the far corner of the second floor, glowing pale yellow even this late at night.

No one was near the building. There was a dark van parked on the corner cutting off most of the lane, which Kaiba knew belonged to his security people, and a matching shape at the other end of the block. With luck whoever was behind those bright windows hadn't bothered to look out in the last half hour to notice.

A Kaiba never relied on luck. He should have ordered them to be less conspicuous. Too late for that now. If the Ghouls realized, if they panicked--frightened men were unpredictable. Dangerous, and his brother was still in their hands. If they decided to cut their losses and run, they wouldn't leave evidence behind. No witnesses...

"Okay, you guys take the front, Honda and me'll go around and sneak in the back," Jounouchi said. "First one to find Mokuba wins!"

"Wait!" Kaiba hissed, but the bonkotsu and his friend had already snuck into a shadowed alley and disappeared.

"It's okay," Yugi said, reassuring. "They know what they're doing, Kaiba-kun, they'll be careful. Trust them."

_Trust them._ Like it was that simple. No doubt or worry in his expression, just faith in his idiot friends, and such unwarranted confidence should be the height of stupidity--but this was Yugi, and Yugi, whatever else Kaiba might think of him, was not stupid.

Mad, then. Insanity must be contagious. Though Kaiba supposed believing in flesh-and-blood people (however great idiots they might be) was less crazy than believing in hallucinated monsters, whatever yardstick of sanity was used, so at least he had Yugi beat on that measure.

And the laugh rising in his throat at the patheticness of that thought confirmed he had lost any last remaining vestiges of sense. That, and the strange calm feeling in him, that kept his hands steady, that relaxed his tight chest enough for him to breathe. Like the hope he felt looking at his dragons, like the sure belief he saw in Yugi's expression now. Faith, trust. _First one to find Mokuba wins_...

It went beyond all reason to think they could still succeed, after so many days of failure, that he could still protect Mokuba, that with nonexistent monsters and these few clueless idiots he might yet save his brother.

But then he had left reason far behind already, hadn't he. Four days past.

He almost lost control of the laugh this time, covered it with a cough. "Come on, then," Kaiba told Yugi, and strode toward the building, not needing to look back to know Yugi was right behind him.

Yugi stayed right behind him as they climbed the cement stairs, stepped back only enough to give Kaiba room to break the window with his elbow and open the front door. They entered the dark vestibule side by side, footsteps guided by the hazy glow of streetlights outside.

Behind them, wings rustled and claws scraped on the floor, but Yugi obviously didn't hear them and Kaiba didn't look back. No time for hallucinations; all his attention was focused forward. His brother was here, right above them. It was all he could do not to call his name, to strain to hear his voice.

"Kaiba," and that harsh whisper was enough for Kaiba to be sure of which Yugi was with him now. No sign of the other one when he glanced down, translucent or otherwise, just the pharaoh, his self-assured strides surprisingly cat-quiet. "If they are holding Mokuba here," Yugi remarked, "then they'd be foolish not to keep guard over their main entryway--"

He stopped, abruptly, both speech and step, as a single light overhead flickered to life.

"Of course," Kaiba answered him, stopping as well, as two masked figures emerged into the corridor before them. "You know I prefer to confront my enemies head-on."

The gray florescent light glittered on metal in their hands. A gun barrel, unmistakably, aimed at Kaiba's head. Kaiba faced that man. "You took my brother," he said, and the calm he felt now was not the useless reassurances of hope or faith, but the simple, obliterating white heat of pure rage. "I've come to get him back."

* * *

_to be continued..._

_Winding up to the finale, should only be a few more chapters, I think. Which is about 5 chapters more than I was originally planning on, but hope everyone's enjoying the journey! As always, reviews are most profoundly appreciated._


	11. he would wait no longer

"Your brother? I don't know what you're talking about, President Kaiba," the masked man facing them said, pleasantly. "But even if I did, and weren't going to call the police to arrest you for breaking and entering, I could still point out that we're armed and you are not." He gestured with the pistol in his hand.

Kaiba studied the gun. Small caliber, easily concealed. The weapon of a small-time hood; the yakuza could afford to be more impressive in their illegal arms, and wouldn't wave them around with such inexperienced bravado. The larger man with him had a similar pistol in one hand and a length of metal pipe heavy enough to shatter kneecaps in the other, but his grip on both club and firearm was as amateur as his associate's.

And they had recognized Kaiba instantly on sight. Ghouls for sure. "Shooting either of us will only compound your crimes. Get out of my way, dogs."

"You're not in command here, Kaiba," the Ghoul snarled back, the pleasantness gone. Kaiba didn't need to see the man's face to know he was the renter of the office where Mokuba had been held, where his brother had been tied to that folding chair with bloody bonds. His looming compatriot was likely the lessee of this place.

Maybe it was only the two of them, foolishly assuming that Kaiba would be an easily managed threat. That a couple guns would be enough to stop them. Kaiba glanced down at Yugi, his rival standing silent and still, his stare fixed on the Ghouls. No fear in his face, naturally, and his anger was restrained. He was letting Kaiba take the lead, and Kaiba was, for an instant before he could contain it, grateful that he was here. Jounouchi or Honda were uncontrollable in their idiocies, but Yugi was as quick to evaluate and master a situation as he was. Reliable. Maybe the most reliable Kaiba knew, after his own brother.

If there were no more thugs left upstairs, then Jounouchi and Honda would have a clear path through the building, as long as they had wits enough to take advantage of this distraction.

Though he probably shouldn't be counting on that. Nor on the Ghouls' small numbers. But if he got these two out of the way now, there would be that fewer of them to obstruct him. And these were two of the men who had kidnapped his brother. Who may have hurt him; who may have done worse. If they even had made it here in time...

His brother might be right overhead at this very moment, and every muscle in Kaiba's body screamed for him to charge forward, but the men were as yet too far away. He wouldn't be able to bring down both in time, even if the Ghouls fumbled their first shots. The kevlar lining of his trenchcoat would stop the bullets of such small caliber pistols, but Yugi had no such protection, and he would need Yugi's assistance.

It was all Kaiba could do not to charge all the same, but the necessary self-control had been beaten into him years ago. He forced himself to lean back, casually non-threatening. Goading. "If you're going to shoot us, go ahead. Do it. The gunshot will alert my personal security outside. Unlike the police, they're paid enough not to have any compunctions about returning fire."

"Don't need to shoot you to shut you up, rich boy," said the bigger Ghoul, starting forward swinging the metal pipe one-handed, the pistol still in his other. Kaiba took a step back, using the pretense of a retreat to set his stance. Just a couple more steps and he could grab the man's wrists, twist the pipe and gun out of his hands and swing around his thick body to block his boss's bullets.

Yugi sidled back a step himself, clearing the way. Kaiba didn't spare him a glance. Yugi would be no trouble to shield; protecting such a small frame came more naturally to Kaiba than breathing.

Except before the Ghoul could advance the final step into range, his boss called, "Stop." He raised his gun again, aiming square between Kaiba's eyes. "You better not be thinking of trying something," the Ghoul said. "See, even if your security takes us down, there's only one entrance to the office upstairs, which might be where what you're looking for is. But if our friend who's up there now hears anyone trying to enter but us, he'll...make sure that you have no reason for being here at all. So, if that matters to you, act carefully, President Kaiba."

He wouldn't sound so confident if that threat didn't carry real weight. Which meant that Mokuba must still be alive, for them to be able to threaten his life, and Kaiba felt a rush of something like adrenaline, revitalizing him. Like light, blinding him; he had to blink to see, his vision momentarily inexplicably blurred.

Couldn't let them see that reaction, too dangerous to his brother to give away that much--but it might be too late for that. Better, then, to let them think they had the upper hand, and underestimate him. "What would I try?" he said, and heard his voice come hoarser than ever with a rasp of exhaustion that was not quite deliberate. "You're the ones armed, as you said."

"I'm glad you understand," the Ghoul said, the ugly smile back in his voice. "So please tell your men on the stairs behind us to stand down."

"What men?" Kaiba kept his tone impassive. He had heard the footsteps, had hoped the Ghouls had not. But hope was, as ever, a worthless tactic.

"Kaiba-shachou, my friend upstairs is expecting to hear back about the situation within fifteen minutes." The Ghoul showed the celphone in his other hand. "If he doesn't get any word from me, he'll be forced to take measures. Now, it's already been seven minutes, and he's probably getting impatient--"

Yugi sighed, almost silently. "Hold on, hold it, don't hurt the kid, okay, we're coming down!" Jounouchi called down. The Ghouls stepped back as a door beside them opened and Jounouchi and Honda emerged, their hands held in the air. Honda spared a glance back long enough to meet Kaiba's eyes and mouth, _"Sorry."_

"What the hell are you doing?" Kaiba snarled.

"Uh, trying not to get anyone hurt?" Jounouchi said.

"We knew Mokuba's upstairs! I didn't think even you could be this stupid, bonkotsu--what are you doing here? You couldn't trust Yugi to leave him alone long enough to do what we came here for?"

"We went upstairs!" Jounouchi shot back. "And found the right door--the one with the big-ass padlock on it, and no other way in, so we went looking for the key, and found you guys. You rather we would've tried to break through it? You heard what this guy just said his buddy would do if we had. We were worried about something like that, that's why we didn't try."

If they had--Kaiba knew the difference between a bluff and a true warning, had heard the genuine threat in the Ghoul's voice. Desperate men. They had failed, they had probably realized they had failed the moment the Blue Eyes had been played. Now they were looking for any way out, and the fewer witnesses the better. That threat was not a matter of if, but when, and had Jounouchi and Honda pushed them--Kaiba was already cold, too cold to shiver, but the chill that went through him was sharp enough he drew an abrupt breath. Forced it out in strangled words, "I apologize. You made the right choice."

He couldn't see Honda and Jounouchi's faces, facing the Ghouls as they were with their hands still over their heads, but they both stiffened. "Did Kaiba just _apologize_ to us?" Honda hissed.

"Did Kaiba just admit we were _right_?" Jounouchi hissed back.

Kaiba ignored them, stared past them to the Ghouls. "What do you want?" he asked. "Ransom? A promise of amnesty?"

"Amnesty? Like we'd trust something like that from you!" Kaiba didn't like the rising note of panic in the Ghoul's voice. The man was having trouble determining the best strategic angle to aim, swinging the pistol back and forth between all of them with unnerving unsteadiness, his comrade trying to compensate by pointing his own gun wherever his boss did not. "You already told us your security's around this building--we let our hostage go, and the moment you get what you came for, we're as good as dead."

The chill mixed with the heat of anger, a rising storm front roiling inside him. "If you murder my brother, you _are_ dead," Kaiba promised him. He flexed his fingers, felt them tighten again into fists. If Mokuba were killed--there would be nothing to stop him from diving at their throats. Nothing at all. "So we're at an impasse."

The Ghoul rocked back on his heels uneasily. "Guess so."

"In that case," Yugi said suddenly, stepping forward, and that bold creature was all the pharaoh, no trace of the other Yugi in the crimson tinge of those narrowed eyes. His lips were curling in a smile the likes of which Kaiba hadn't seen since their very first duel, so long ago, when he had issued a challenge to the death. "How about a game?"

"A _game_?" The Ghoul gaped. "Does this look like a playground, kid?"

"This is all over a game anyway, isn't it?" Yugi asked. "You're duelists, are you not?" --In the loosest, lowest sense of the word, and Kaiba could hear the disgust with which Yugi called them such, but the Ghoul was listening, had relaxed enough to train his gun solely on the pharaoh's short figure. "So why don't we play a game to decide this? If you win, Kaiba will send away his security. The police haven't been called, so you'll make a clean escape."

"A game." The man barked a harsh laugh. "You are kids, aren't you. So if _you_ win this game, what will you get?"

"If we win, you'll give us what we came for, of course."

"Of course." Glaring at Yugi narrow-eyed, the Ghoul demanded, "And what are we gonna play--let me guess, Duel Monsters? You take us for idiots, Duel King? Yeah, I was at Battle City, I remember you. You seriously expect me to agree to duel the reigning world champion?"

"Nothing so complicated," Yugi said smoothly. "How about we leave it up to chance?" and from his pocket he took out a 500 yen coin, glittering gold as he twirled it between his fingers. "We two, you and I, will play for all our comrades, a single round. The winning team will take the best two tosses out of three. The losing will take a penalty. Do you accept, for all your men?"

The Ghoul's head tilted back toward Kaiba. "How do we know the president here will really call off his security?"

"You can trust in his honor as a gamer. Do you agree to play, Kaiba?"

Something shone in Yugi's eyes, bright and dangerous and unconquerable. Kaiba had seen it there before, standing before Malik, before Dartz; had risked putting his faith in that intense spirit more than once before. It had yet to fail him. He nodded. "I agree. I'll call them off. If we lose."

The Ghoul glanced at his henchman, who shrugged; cocked his head in calculation of the odds, then at last nodded. "Fine. We'll play."

"First toss is mine," Yugi said. "You call." He flipped the coin into the air.

At the apex of the throw, the Ghoul snapped, "Heads."

The coin hit the floor, bounced once and came to rest with a swirling clink. Yugi leaned over it with his hands carefully out of reach behind his back, studied it expressionlessly, then retreated a step as the Ghoul waved his compatriot with the pipe forward to check it, his own gun still aimed at Yugi.

"It's heads," the larger Ghoul said, his smirk audible behind his mask.

"Give it here." The Ghoul extended his hand and his henchman dropped the coin into it. The Ghoul turned the 500 yen piece over, examining both sides, then shrugged in satisfaction and tossed it up.

As soon as it left his hand, Yugi stated, calmly, "Tails."

The coin rolled a few decimeters when it hit the floor, finally fell to one side. Kaiba craned his neck to see, but the big Ghoul blocked his view. He leaned over the coin, then cursed. "Tails," he told his boss.

"Final toss," Yugi said, impassive, as he crouched and retrieved his coin. "You remember the rules of the game? If you call it correctly, you win. If you do not, you and your men lose, and take the penalty."

"We remember the damn rules," snarled the Ghoul. He gestured imperatively with the pistol, but his hand was trembling almost as much as his voice. "Toss the coin!"

Yugi flipped the coin again, higher than before, almost to the ceiling. All eyes followed the course of its twinkling arc, and Kaiba could hear the others holding their breaths, as if not to risk any exhalation disturbing that spinning gold. He felt the tension himself, more than just the weight of everything at stake in this game. Even the rustle of the unseen monsters behind him had gone silent, but he could feel the intensity of their attention. Like atmospheric pressure, invisible forces gathering in the air.

Then, just as it became unbearable, that tension was broken. The Ghoul didn't call; instead he lunged forward, knocking the coin spinning off into the dark shadows down the hall, and grabbed Yugi by the throat, pressing the pistol to his temple. "Screw this game," he cried. "Call off your dogs, Kaiba, if you don't want your friend's head blown off!"

Jounouchi and Honda made inarticulate enraged noises, their simultaneous rush stopped in its tracks.

"My friend?" Kaiba repeated in flat disbelief, mostly at the audacity of the man's assumption. Though it was true that having his rival's brains splattered on his trenchcoat was not the victory he desired. Completely unacceptable.

But then Yugi hardly looked as if he were prepared to have any part of him splattered. If he was not exactly smiling, it was because the danger shining in his eyes obscured the twisted curve of his mouth. "You didn't call it," he said, with a calm so perfect it was gloating. "You lost. There will be a penalty game, for all of you."

The light overhead flickered, blinding bright, then died with a pop, plunging them into darkness. Kaiba heard the Ghoul grunt, guessed it was Yugi freeing himself with a well-placed elbow. Kaiba shoved forward himself, only to be stopped by a flashlight beam in his face, blinding him.

"Stop!" screeched the Ghoul, somewhere behind that light, "or I'll call my man upstairs!" He brandished the celphone, its square display blinking blue. "You're going to let us go--no, you're gonna help get us out of here, Kaiba, you're gonna give us a car, and money, unless you want your brother's body--"

"It's too late," Yugi said, with that same absolute, vicious calm, climbing back to his feet. "You lost."

"Shut up, kid, we're not playing games anymore." The Ghoul was looking at Kaiba, must have noticed the color drain from his face; there was triumph in his snarled, "So that is getting to you, Kaiba. Should've guessed, the big CEO comes personally to fetch his brat brother, the kid must mean something to you. You hear me, Kaiba? You're gonna help us, now, if you want your precious baby brother back unharmed."

The Ghoul's voice changed, stretched by an arrogant, sickening smirk. "Or at least, not any more harmed. The brat took some _persuasion_, and still wouldn't listen. Just lied to us, and whined for his big brother whenever he thought we couldn't hear. But if you're cooperative, at least you'll get back what's left of him..."

Something in Kaiba Seto snapped. He wasn't sure what it was, but he heard the crack. It sounded like a stick being broken in two. Not his sanity; he had let that go, legally over twenty hours ago. In practice almost four days.

Not his sanity, but something. He smiled, a real smile, not the false mask but one he felt in his eyes as well as his mouth. And yet the Ghouls recoiled from it, pressing back to back as they stared at him.

Kaiba raised his hand. "Blue Eyes White Dragons, come," he called forth.

"What are you talking about, you don't even have a duel disk!" Jounouchi hissed frantically. "Don't completely lose it here on us, Kaiba--"

"Uh, Jounouchi?" Honda whispered, a hoarse, dry-mouthed gasp. "If he doesn't have a duel disk, then what the hell is..."

And here came his dragons, one rearing up on either side of him, white scaled necks arching back with serpentine grace.

No holograms, these; Kaiba had designed the Solid Vision system personally, and these were not its productions. More real than any prior hallucination--he had only seen a Blue Eyes like this once before, in that very first duel with Yugi, and that had been an impossible nightmare. These monsters here were too vivid, too alive to be mistaken for anything but reality. Even if only the reality in his own mind--though Jounouchi and Honda both were gasping like they'd forgotten how to breathe, and the Ghouls were cowering back like a pair of whipped dogs, trembling, the guns and celphone fallen from nerveless fingers, lying useless at their feet.

Behind him, Kaiba could hear the muted murmurs and growls and hisses, and knew his Blue Eyes were not alone, but they were all he needed. Yugi turned back, his face illuminated by the dragons' white shine, and nodded to Kaiba, a slow, somehow _permissive_ nod.

Without his third Blue Eyes there could be no fusion, but this dingy hallway was hardly big enough for just the pair as it was, and these sniveling cowards didn't deserve the Ultimate Dragon. Kaiba extended his fingers toward the two masked men. "Blue Eyes."

Great jaws gaping, the dragons roared in answer, and were in turn answered. Jounouchi jerked up his head to stare at the ceiling, where the matching roar shook the building. "Holy shit, the third one's upstairs--"

Twin spheres of white light were gathering in the quivering jaws of the dragons, brighter and more blinding than the sun, and Kaiba knew that the third Blue Eyes with his brother above them had also heard his command, was also attacking. He could hear Honda beside him, muttering, "This can't be happening--this totally cannot be--"

The Ghouls were speaking too, the big one mumbling incoherently, what might have been a prayer; his boss screaming, a thin, muffled sound after the dragons' thunder, with his hands up to uselessly shield his eyes, "No, please, no, _no--!_"

Kaiba stared for an instant at their trembling figures, starkly lit in the white corona of the dragons' power. This was no duel; these were not monsters, just men, petty and helpless.

The men who had stolen his brother away, who had hurt him, had threatened his life, as if he were nothing more than a card to be discarded, a worthless monster to be sacrificed. They didn't deserve this honor, but it had been four days and he would wait no longer.

He tore his gaze from the darkness of the Ghouls' silhouettes and raised his eyes to his brilliant dragons. Drew a breath and commanded the Blue Eyes, "_Horobi no Burst Stream!_"

The dragons' jaws shuddered wider; synchronized, they twisted down their heads and released their double attack, unleashed energy pouring from their mouths. Engulfed by that shining power, lost in the rush of the blasts, the Ghoul's continued scream was barely audible, soaring to a shriek--

Then, over the noise of the attack, sounded a percussive boom, echoing down from the floor overhead. A single gunshot, and Kaiba Seto heard it and was deafened, no longer able to hear the Ghouls' cries, or Yugi's or the others' voices, or his dragons' roars; unable to hear anything but that single brutal pistol shot, by which he might have finally failed, might have finally lost, even with his dragons beside him. Finally lost such that he would never win again.

"_Mokuba!_"

* * *

_to be continued..._

_Almost there! Thank you so much as always for the reviews - I apologize for my lack of individual response, I haven't had much time online of late and figured most of you would prefer me writing more story anyway! But it's always wonderful to know anyone's reading._


	12. something even better

One of his Blue Eyes before him, two behind him, but Kaiba was halfway up the stairs before he realized he had left any of them behind, charging blindly, madly. The realization didn't slow him down. He didn't need his dragons; this was his responsibility, his alone. His brother's life had been his to protect for ten years. If he had failed in that--

His fault alone, if he had. The echo of the gunshot was ringing in his ears, resounding in his mind, still deafening. He should have assumed that the Ghoul upstairs with Mokuba would have also had a gun, knowing the immediate danger to his brother's life. Should have been more cautious, but he hadn't been capable of it. Hadn't been thinking at all. In his madness he had allowed rage to overwhelm all sense or prudence, everything but the satisfying fury of his dragons blasting his enemies away.

If he had failed, he didn't care; if he had lost, if that responsibility had been too much for him--Kaiba didn't care anymore. Life and death was the ultimate game but it no longer mattered whether he won or lost, whether the Ghouls or his own insanity or anything else defeated him, not now.

He just wanted his brother back, safe and sound. Alive.

Kuriboh was at the top of the stairs, bouncing and squealing; Black Magician beside him raised his staff to point down the hall. Kaiba ran down the dark corridors, guided every step by tall figures and fierce creatures, every one of them impossible, every one of them urging him on, toward his dragon, to his brother. Only to have his way blocked by a door--just a flimsy metal door, which buckled and rattled when he threw his shoulder against it.

There was a cry in the air that sounded like the roars of his dragons, except it seemed to be coming from his own throat. The door's metal dented under his kicks, though it didn't give way.

"Kaiba, what the hell are you trying to do, outrun a shadow game? Kaiba--Kaiba!" Hands on his shoulders yanked him back from the door, and he wrenched around, grabbed his assailant by the throat to toss him aside, out of his way. Black Magician Girl was screeching at him; the Flame Swordsman raised his burning blade. Jounouchi fought back, clouting him over the head, hardly hard enough to bring him down.

"Keys!" the bonkotsu panted, brown eyes locking onto Kaiba's, his dragon's scarlet glare reflecting in his pupils. "I got the keys off the guy downstairs, just let me get to the lock!"

He jangled the key ring in his hand assertively, and Kaiba let him go. Jounouchi staggered but didn't waste time catching his breath, just tried one key after another in the padlock until it snapped open, and Kaiba shoved him aside and slammed through the door.

His dragon trumpeted a greeting, the Blue Eyes filling the room, white wings spread wall to wall and its spiked neck arched to fit under the ceiling. Chairs and desks of computer equipment had been knocked asunder by the sweep of its long tail. Beneath one huge clawed talon lay the third Ghoul, unconscious or more, a pistol fallen beside his outstretched hand.

And on the other side of the room, crumpled by a tipped-over desk and sheltered under the dragon's wing, a small figure lay curled on his side, tangled black hair over his face, motionless.

"Mokuba-kun?" murmured Yugi, entering with the others behind him. Yugi again, not the pharaoh, though that other one was here, too; Kaiba could feel the sharpness of his gaze at his back, could hear his quiet, "Kaiba..."

"God--is he--he can't be--" the bonkotsu muttered, hushed and upset, and Honda just swore, in the same sensitive whisper.

Kaiba didn't answer them, couldn't have even if for whatever reasons he had wanted to; voice and breath were locked in his throat. In that mute silence the only sounds were the too-loud beating of his heart, and his footsteps as he crossed the floor, the rustle of his white coat as he knelt, gathered his little brother up in his arms.

"Mokuba?" he asked, and nothing else mattered, not the Ghoul, not the impossible white dragon looming over them, not Yugi and the others' cautious approach; nothing could have any meaning at all, until his brother answered him.

o o o

Mokuba was dreaming again. Seeing things again, and not only the dragon. Something even better. The big Ghoul had been beating him, kicking him, but then the Blue Eyes was roaring, and the Ghoul shouting, aiming his pistol up at the monster with shaking hands. The burst of white light just as the gun fired blinded him, overwhelmed him.

And then somehow the Ghoul had become his brother--not the nightmare of before, but his real brother. His brother holding him, carefully, closely, calling his name. "Mokuba. Mokuba, wake up..."

It had to be a dream. This wasn't his brother's voice, not his brother's voice now, too tender to be Kaiba Seto--this was just Seto, his brother as he had been years ago. The brother who used to play chess with him at the orphanage, smiling openly.

Just a dream, another hallucination, the mind escaping from trauma--but the arms holding him were warm and gentle, supporting his bruised body without hurting. He felt safe, being held like that, as if it really were his brother here, and he was protected, saved, and the Ghouls could never hurt him again.

"Nii-sama," he sighed, not wanting to open his eyes and wake up, "I wish you were really here..."

"Mokuba?" The arms around him tightened, enough pressure on his bruises to make him twitch, and gave him a small cautious shake. "Mokuba, are you awake? Can you hear me?"

That sounded a little more like his brother, but only a little, because his brother's voice never wavered like that. "...Nii-sama?"

Mokuba opened his eyes, but the vision didn't end; his brother was still there, was still holding him. But everything was mixed up, the way it was in dreams, because his brother looked the age he was right now, but when Mokuba opened his eyes Seto smiled, and it was the smile of his old brother at the orphanage. Not triumphant or gloating or menacing, just happy.

"Nii-sama," Mokuba said, as fast as he could, because if somehow this truly was his brother, then maybe he didn't understand, "I'm sorry about everything, I'm sorry I let myself get grabbed like that, and that I couldn't get away by myself, and I'm sorry about the Blue Eyes--"

"Mokuba," his brother said, like he wasn't even hearing him, "are you all right? Are you injured?"

Mokuba felt the lump in his throat; it was all he could do not to start crying again, but any tears wouldn't be to trick the Ghouls now, would just be humiliating, weak, and he had already let down his brother enough. "I'm really sorry about the Blue Eyes, it was all I could think of. I'm sorry I let them use your dragon, even if it wasn't real, and I wish it was really you, Nii-sama, so I could tell you--"

"It's me, Mokuba," his brother told him, "I'm here. I found you," and he squeezed his arms, painfully tight, but it was real pain, a real touch.

As if this were real after all, and Mokuba blinked hard to force his gaze into focus. "You're really here, Nii-sama?"

"I am." Those were really his brother's eyes, as blue as the dragon's.

Mokuba could hear other voices now, muttering behind them. He tried to sit up, only to gasp at the pain that shot through his ribs, bright reds and purples streaking his vision. His brother held him still. "Don't move."

If he breathed shallowly he could just about manage not to black out. He didn't dare turn his head toward those other voices, or else he might make himself sick. And his brother didn't seem to hear them, or bother paying attention to them if he did. Like they weren't a threat. "But--where are the Ghouls?"

"Gone," his brother said, so savagely that there could be no doubts or questions.

The Blue Eyes roared with him in emphasis. And his brother raised his head, as if responding to that thunder.

"You can hear it, too, Nii-sama?" Mokuba asked. If his brother also heard the dragon, then he wasn't crazy after all.

His brother didn't answer, though; instead he again lowered his head to Mokuba's. "Mokuba," he said, only a rough whisper, "I'm sorry it took so long for me to come, so long to find you. Forgive me."

"Nii-sama," Mokuba said. He was safe, and his brother was here, so the prickling of tears in his eyes must be from the pain, even though the sharp spasms had receded to only a dull heavy ache. Everything else was receding, too, his brother's voice sounding softer and farther away, even the dragon's bright white darkening. "Nii-sama, thank you...thank you for lending me the Blue Eyes. It helped me," he managed to say, and then he closed his eyes and let everything go away, everything but the assurance that his brother would still be there when he woke.

o o o

For the moment when Mokuba's eyes closed, Kaiba's heart seized up, a cold fused tightness in his chest. But he could feel his brother's chest move with his even breathing, and that reassurance was enough for it to begin beating again.

"Kaiba-kun?"

When Kaiba raised his head, his dragon was gone, leaving the room dim and dingy, artificial lights a pale substitute in the wake of its brilliance. They were alone but for Yugi and the other two, and what was left of the Ghoul. Kaiba could barely make any of them out, still blinded by that imaginary light. Honda was leaning over the prone man, waving a hand before his unseeing eyes. "This bastard's...out."

"Yeah." Jounouchi had his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched as he stared up at the bullet hole in the ceiling. "What'd you expect, that was one hell of a shadow game penalty." The frowning furrows in his brow deepened. "...It _was_ a shadow game, right, Yugi?"

The other Yugi was looking at Kaiba, directly at him, satisfaction in that regal countenance. Subtly different from his usual triumphant smirk, not just a victor's conceit but something more, a different sort of pride. Almost like that he got when watching the bonkotsu play. Or when playing alongside his friend. Sharing a victory, but proudly, as if that sharing somehow didn't diminish the achievement but made it all the more worthwhile.

_What are you grinning at?_ Kaiba could have said, could have challenged the pharaoh, but he didn't. Didn't care; couldn't. Not at this moment, not when his brother was safe.

It was finally over, and the relief was dizzying, so profound that everything felt unreal, like another hallucination. His awareness was drifting, as if the knowledge of success loosed his spirit to float away, with nothing to anchor it. Except Mokuba was in his arms, a warm and solid weight.

"Kaiba-kun?" Yugi's voice. Yugi's hand on his shoulder, steadying him as he swayed where he sat. That cautious, reinforcing touch was unmistakable. Though Kaiba could barely make out his face when he looked up, his vision blurred, not sharpening when he blinked.

"We better get going," Jounouchi said from the fuzziness behind him. "If someone reported that gunshot, the cops'll be on their way."

"He's right, Kaiba-kun. You should call your security in, have them handle things here," Yugi said. "We should go now, we ought to be taking Mokuba-kun to the hospital..."

Kaiba listened to him speak, but none of the words resolved into sense, like hearing a foreign language he hadn't practiced in too long. There was a buzzing in his ears, rising and falling with the pulsing of the black spots that were encroaching on his vision. Irritably he identified the familiar symptoms of exhaustion, frowned and tried to banish them back, but they remained. Much like the obstinate hallucination of the dual edition of his rival, which hadn't had the courtesy to depart with the rest of the monsters, the pharaoh still standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his other self.

Or else he was just seeing double by now. It would be an improvement.

"Kaiba-kun, are you listening? Mokuba-kun looks hurt, we should get him help. I can carry him, if you're tired--" Yugi crouched by him, put out his arms to take Mokuba.

That, at least, Kaiba understood; he growled warning and tightened his hold on his brother, hunched his shoulders to shield him from that undetermined threat. Yugi stopped trying, rocked back on his heels. "Kaiba-kun, you really have to..."

"Yugi," Jounouchi said, sounding almost amused, a tired, rueful humor, "give it up." Another hand came to rest on his shoulder, rougher than Yugi's but no less supportive. "Kaiba, you just rest now. We'll take care of this."

Which was unacceptable, impossible--but he was too exhausted to figure out why. Yugi was here, with his friends, as they had been all along. As they would be, if he needed them; and the certainty of that went deeper than any meaningless twinges of pride or mistrust. And they wouldn't hurt Mokuba, which was all that really mattered.

Besides, it was just as impossible to move. Free his spirit might be, but every cell in his body had become denser than lead. Impossible not to let his heavy eyes close, his heavy head fall.

"Be damned if I'll follow your orders, bonkotsu," Kaiba managed to say, and then, with the bonkotsu squawking in reassuringly predictable outrage, and his brother safe in his arms and four days of insanity behind them, he finally went to sleep.

* * *

_to be concluded..._


	13. Epilogue

"You're supposed to be at home."

Mokuba looked up from his computer as his brother entered the office. "I've _been_ home for two days already. I missed almost a week, there's a lot of work to catch up on."

"The doctor recommended at least three days of bed rest," his brother said, taking a seat behind his desk.

"So I'm resting on the couch here. It's okay, Nii-sama, I feel fine."

His brother didn't look entirely convinced, and that Mokuba took as a bad sign. Seto had never put much stock in doctors, especially after reading all the various and sundry and totally wrong diagnoses of his condition after Death-T. For him to trust some random doctor's word, over his own brother's--something was wrong.

It wasn't like Mokuba was lying, after all; he was fine. Perfectly fit for work. Okay, he looked a sight in the mirror, with the bruises everywhere, but the injuries were superficial. All he had really needed was a good meal and a good night's sleep. The couple cracked ribs would heal completely with time; as long as he remembered to breathe shallowly they didn't hurt enough to distract him.

But there had been something wrong since he had woken up in a hospital bed two days ago, with his brother there, sitting in a plastic chair beside the bed. Wrong, because his brother had had his laptop with him, but Mokuba hadn't heard him typing; when he opened his eyes Seto had been staring at the screen, but blankly, like he wasn't even reading whatever document he had up. And he had looked so tired--Seto often looked tired, especially close to a shipping deadline for a new game or product; but not like that, not so exhausted that his cheeks were drawn in, hollowed, and his eyes unfocused. Mokuba hadn't seen his brother look like that for--years. Not since Gozaburo's lessons.

"Nii-sama?" he had asked, concerned, and his brother had sat up straight, leaned forward to take his hand and ask him how he felt, nodding with quiet relief when Mokuba had assured him that the painkillers were working fine.

"Your injuries aren't severe," his brother had told him then, and Mokuba, because he had been too sleepy from the drugs to think of a better way to do it, had said, "Good, so you can go home and sleep, Nii-sama."

Usually that would have occasioned a curt accounting of precisely how much an hour of sleep cost the company, or at least a derisive mention of the correlation between losers and sloth; but his brother didn't argue, just smiled faintly, tiredly, and said, "If the doctors say so, we both can."

Which they had, and Mokuba had dozed off on the ride home and pleasantly awoken in his own bed the next morning. And Seto had looked more himself when they ate breakfast together, the dark circles gone from under his eyes. Though it was odd for him to be there at all; usually he would have been at the office hours earlier. Like he had been waiting for Mokuba to get up before he left, and he came back early, too, long before Mokuba went to sleep that evening.

But there was no reason for that; not like his brother were still holding his hand when he went to sleep, or sitting by his bedside when he woke up. Not like Mokuba needed that attention. As he reminded himself every night, he shouldn't have nightmares. Even if the police hadn't arrested all three of the Ghouls, they wouldn't be kidnapping him, or anyone else, for a very long time. Or walking or talking, for that matter. Their lack of external injuries had baffled the cops, but Mokuba knew better. It had taken his brother six months to awaken, and none of the Ghouls were Kaiba Seto. They wouldn't be coming for him again.

His subconscious, however, was harder to convince. But Mokuba had no clear memories of his nightmares; whenever one might have woken him, it was dispelled by a warm touch, a soft voice. Come morning, he couldn't fully recall whether that comfort was real, or just more dreams.

Like the dragon. He still wasn't sure if he had just dreamed the Blue Eyes, or actually hallucinated it, or...something else. What that else might be, he didn't know.

Anymore than he knew what was wrong with his brother. And his brother wouldn't look him in the eyes long enough for Mokuba to figure it out. Which was the problem, because Seto didn't hesitate to meet anyone's eyes; he never had. Even the other Yugi's sharp glare he faced unflinching.

But for the past few days, whenever he looked at Mokuba, he would just as quickly turn away. Almost like he was afraid, but that didn't make sense, because this was Seto, and Seto wasn't afraid of anything.

But something now made Seto look away--and made him peer into dark corners, or glance behind himself occasionally, not nervously, but like he was hearing something, or checking for something. He had taken out his deck yesterday evening, but not to play, or to test the latest version of the duel disk; instead he had just shuffled through the deck, gazing at his cards. At the Blue Eyes, like he had needed to make sure the dragons were still in his deck.

Mokuba might have asked him then, had he been able to figure out how to say it. _'Hey, Nii-sama, I saw a Blue Eyes come to life without a duel disk and protect me, it was really pretty.'_ Right. Because his brother wasn't looking at him strangely enough already.

Maybe that was why. Maybe he had talked about it in his sleep, so his brother knew he was crazy, and that was why Seto turned away, from the shame of it. It must be embarrassing, having a crazy little brother. Not to mention it was hardly a fit mental condition for KaibaCorp's vice president.

Which was one reason Mokuba had pushed to come to the office today. He had shirked his duties long enough, getting kidnapped like that. And it wasn't any help to his brother to do like the doctor had said and stay home playing video games.

Besides, he had a lot to do. Even more than he had thought, he was discovering, checking their schedule now. There were an awful lot of things that should be done that hadn't been, for some reason. "Nii-sama, why do you have a meeting scheduled with the disk R&D team tomorrow afternoon? You were supposed to meet with them last Wednesday, weren't you?"

"The Wednesday meeting was cancelled," his brother said.

"Cancelled? And what about last Thursday's interviews for the new e-games programming head, were they rescheduled, too? "

"Yes."

"Why?"

Seto glanced over. "Something came up."

"Something? What? Nii-sama, it's like KaibaCorp just shut down for a few days--what _happened_, when I was gone?"

His brother was looking at him directly for that moment, though there was still something strange in his eyes. "You were gone," he said, finally, simply.

"But, Nii-sama, you don't need a vice president for everything. And you couldn't have wasted that much time looking for me--"

"I didn't waste any time," his brother said, almost sharply, almost angrily. "I concentrated on what was most important at the time."

"What was most important..." And now Mokuba was the one who had to turn away. "Nii-sama... I'm sorry I let the Ghouls take me. I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough."

"You were strong enough," his brother said, and it was in his duelist's voice, his challenger's voice that few had the nerve to defy. "You're here now. You're here and they're gone--you were strong enough."

"But I didn't get away by myself, I couldn't defeat them--"

"Mokuba." And now his brother did look away, look down, and that something wrong was clear in his voice, in how he hesitated, as if he didn't want to continue. As if he really were afraid. "Mokuba, I'm the one who wasn't strong enough. I'm the one who couldn't defeat them, not by myself. I needed...I couldn't have saved you, without their help."

_Whose_, Mokuba might have asked, but that wasn't as important as the note in his brother's tone, that doubt, where there should be none, where he knew that none belonged. "Yes, you could have, Nii-sama. I might be too weak, but I knew you would save me, no matter what you had to do, or whose help you had to get." And after saying so much already, he found himself continuing on, "Nii-sama, when the Ghouls had me, at the very end, I saw...something."

His brother's voice was sharp but cautious, balanced on an unseen edge. "What did you see?"

He'd said too much, much too late to chicken out now. "I was so hungry and thirsty, the doctors said I was dehydrated, didn't they, and you can hallucinate because of that, or if you're tired enough...but it didn't feel like a dream, it felt real. I thought I saw a Blue Eyes. Not a hologram, a real dragon. It...protected me. It's the one that roared, and brought you--you asked me yesterday, how I programmed the duel disk to make a fake Blue Eyes, and I don't remember exactly what I did, but...it wasn't a fake. It was real. Really there."

His brother could have told him he was crazy then, not at all cruelly but honestly. But he wasn't going to; even before he said anything, Mokuba saw his answer, in the way Seto straightened up, caught his breath, almost inaudibly. "Mokuba...I saw them, too."

"But how? What were they? Were they a shadow game?" His brother didn't own one of the ancient artifacts that the other Yugi and the others had, but then Mokuba didn't doubt that his brother could make a shadow game anyway, if he really had to. "You really saw your Blue Eyes, they really were there."

"...Not just them."

"You mean there were other monsters, too? Other cards? How many were there?" It occurred to Mokuba then, what his brother might have been looking at lately, when he had been glancing back over his shoulder. "Are they still here? Can you still see them, Nii-sama?"

His brother gave him a long look. Cool and closed, mostly unreadable, but that aloof composure was more familiar than the guilt that had been in his eyes the past few days. "They're most probably hallucinations. It's the only logical explanation. The only possible one. That we shared some of the visions is likely only coincidence--"

"_Possible_? Nii-sama, since when is anything we do 'possible'? The God Cards, you being able to read the Ra card, or what Pegasus did to us--or what Yugi did to you?"

"Or which Yugi did it," his brother muttered, then grimaced like he hadn't intended to speak at all. "Yugi didn't see any of them," he said. "Neither Yugi said anything about the monsters. Though the shadow games are his, that other Yugi's."

"But maybe they weren't shadow games, maybe they're a different kind of magic. Or maybe Yugi did know the monsters were there. Maybe they're always there, and we just don't know it. Besides, Nii-sama, why would you have been hallucinating anyway..." Mokuba paused, struck by a sudden realization. "Nii-sama, if Yugi didn't mention them--Yugi was there? When you were looking for me?"

His brother's face momentarily twisted into a look that was half resigned chagrin, half the agony of a man who has suffered torment so extreme there are no words adequate to describe the experience. It was quite an incredible expression, though being Seto, it lasted all of half a second before he mastered it, to state flatly, "Yugi was there. And his friends as well."

"Really? I thought I heard their voices, when you found me, but I wasn't sure if I'd imagined them..." He wondered just how that had come about. More than once in the past Mokuba had gone to Yugi for help, but his brother never approved of those measures. And for Yugi's friends to have been there, too--while Yugi would help anyone who asked, his friends didn't especially like Mokuba's brother. That they would have agreed... "Nii-sama, is that why there's this appointment on this afternoon's schedule? The one about 'hammering the bonkotsu into the ground'?"

His brother's expression was too pained for even his control to hide it. "We're dueling this afternoon."

"You agreed to duel Jounouchi? But you always said that would be too big a waste of time for you ever to bother--"

"He likes the taste of defeat. And I... He was...helpful." Seto sighed. "They all were. Without them, I..."

He was about to turn away again, but Mokuba had had enough. Things had been wrong for too long already and he wasn't going to let them keep being that way. Ignoring the pang that shot through his chest, he got up and pounced to wrap his arms tight around his brother. "Nii-sama, thank you."

His brother didn't hesitate to return the hug, carefully, crucially aware of those cracked ribs even though Mokuba had been trying to hide them so he would forget to worry. "Mokuba, you--"

"You saved me, Nii-sama, even though you had to work with Yugi and Jounouchi and the others you don't like, but you did it anyways, to save me."

"Of course I did," his brother said, sounding genuinely surprised.

"I knew you would," Mokuba told him, "but it still makes me happy to hear it, Nii-sama." He held on a little longer, finally had to let go to catch his breath over the ache in his ribs, and asked, "Can I come with you this afternoon, when you go to duel Jounouchi? I want to watch you crush him. And we could all get dinner together afterwards."

"'Together'?"

"With Yugi and everybody. I'd like to see them."

"I've seen enough of them to last me a lifetime."

"But I haven't. And I want to thank them, too, for helping you."

"Several lifetimes."

"Please, Nii-sama?"

"The doctor recommended three days of bed rest at least."

But it wasn't like his brother had ever followed a doctor's recommendation. Mokuba grinned. "Thanks, Nii-sama! You'll see, it'll be fun."

His brother grunted a monosyllable of pure disbelief, then said, "If you're staying here, we might as well get something done."

Mokuba nodded, and his brother launched into an explanation of the new security measures to be implemented by the next upgrade of the duel disk network. The next generation of fake cards recovered from the Ghouls' stash would require additional precautions, and Mokuba was glad to brainstorm the problem with his brother.

He was even gladder to have his brother looking him straight in the eye again, whatever that had been wrong put aside, buried and forgotten. Like the last week hadn't happened at all. Except for the couple times he caught his brother glancing around the office, like he was watching for someone when no one was there.

Mokuba didn't bother bringing that up. He would ask Yugi about it when he saw him this afternoon. Find out for sure if Yugi had seen anything. And maybe ask him, too, about what exactly had happened when he had been gone. Mokuba could ask Seto, but he had a feeling Yugi could tell him things his brother might have forgotten. Like what could have happened to his brother to make him believe that he logically might have been seeing things.

Though really that didn't matter. How his brother had saved him wasn't as important as knowing that he had. That he always would. No matter what monsters he had to sacrifice, or who he had to duel with afterwards.

Or how many dragons he had to summon. But then, maybe he didn't need to summon them. Maybe they were with him all along.

_"Thank you, too,"_ Mokuba whispered, to whatever unseen and impossible ears might be listening.

"What was that, Mokuba?" his brother asked, looking up from his computer.

"Nothing, Nii-sama," Mokuba said. "I found a good site on the latest probability matrix encoding, let me email it to you..."

His brother was right. The monsters had probably just been hallucinations, gone now that they were fully aware and awake and better again.

And if he felt something brush against his cheek, like the smooth scales of a shining white wing, well, maybe he was still dreaming a little bit after all.

_owari_

* * *

_To all my readers, those who reviewed and those who didn't - thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, all the way to the end! And for everyone who did review, I can't tell you how much I appreciated it. It's great knowing how you feel about the story as it progresses. Especially a story this, er...crazy!_

_To the people who noted some discrepancy in Yami Yugi's attitude in chapter 10, while I hate to explain a story (it's poor writing on my part if the story doesn't explain itself!), I do want to point out that this fic is told mostly from Kaiba's point of view, and Kaiba, bless him, can be a terribly unreliable narrator. What he might see as a challenge made in contemptuous anger might, from other perspectives, be an unconventional overture of friendship, an attempt to wedge a foot in a door that Kaiba has slammed shut in their faces so many times before..._

_Now that this is over, I have other fics to turn to - am working on the end of "Safeguard" (as well as fic for my other fandoms) and there will be more YGO from me as well. Sorry, Kaiba boys, I'm not done with you yet - you're just too much fun!_


End file.
